The Eternal Torment of Tayuya Uzumaki
by ensou
Summary: Tayuya dies in the forest following her battle with Shikamaru, only to wake up... and find that everything has changed. Who knew that she could become so different? Tayuya-centric. Updates weekly on Fridays.
1. The Bonds That Bind Us

This story evolved out of a question: "Tayuya somehow survives, but no one is there to help her, so how did she live?". There are a couple stories where she gets rescued by Jiraiya or Naruto, but I wanted to explore what could be done with _just_ her as the main character. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer:**

Did Naruto ever need to choose between the lesser of two evils, and then find out later he'd chosen wrong? If not, I don't own Naruto, nor any of the associated universe.

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><p><strong>Part 1: Life<strong>  
><strong>Chapter 1: The Bonds That Bind Us<strong>

Dying… was not what Tayuya had expected.

Instead of the afterlife that she had hoped to experience, it was black and inky, with vague feelings of malcontent and worry. She had no sight, but her hearing wavered in and out.

"She's the most compatible we've seen! If we don't take this opportunity, we may never get another chance!"

Whispered mutters filled her hearing.

A clear, feminine voice rose up, and rang out in the dark like a bell.

"Do it. We have no other choice." It seemed to grow weary. "We _cannot_ allow _her_ to succeed."

The voice seemed to turn in Tayuya's direction. "I only hope she can forgive us."

And then there was silence. And Tayuya was thrown back into the void.

A spot appeared on the dark empty canvas, and expanded, appearing to rush towards her. And then she could see.

… What had she been doing? Something niggled at the back of her awareness, but she couldn't recall what it was. It was like a gap, but even the knowledge that there was a gap slowly sifted out of her mind.

* * *

><p>Blinking, Tayuya blearily opened her eyes and looked around. Her vision swarmed with browns and greens, and she realized that her face was directly next to a tree trunk.<p>

Whipping her head up, she cleared her eyes. And looked around.

She had been in a fight… with a shadow user. And he had caught her, but she had him on the ropes. And then…

She struggled to remember.

There was a girl. With weird blond hair. And a Suna hita-ite. And a fucking gigantic fan. Right.

She had used that fan? And… she had summoned something, like her dokis. A weasel? With one eye. And sickle.

And then Tayuya had been thrown into the air, tossed like a leaf in the wind. Her flute had been sliced to pieces in front of her. She had been sure she was going to die. She had watched the bisected tree trunks fall on her.

So why wasn't she dead?

That seemed to be the question of the moment. She opened her eyes from her concentration, and continued surveying the situation.

_Note to self. Do not attempt to engage wind users who know their shit in the middle of a forest._

Right until her eyes hit the large segments of wood that were crushing her entire lower half.

Let it be known, Tayuya _can_ scream. Just… not like you'd expect.

"AHHHHHHHH" She realized she wasn't feeling any pain. "hhhhhhhhhhhh?"

Where was the pain? She realized there was a lot of adrenaline in her system, but not nearly enough to deal with the fuck-ton of pain she _should_ be feeling. She'd have to practically be sedated not to feel this. She pinched her arm. Well, she could still feel that. And then she poked the little bit of exposed flesh she could below her waist. Nothing.

Well, that was curious. Orochimaru would no doubt be interested in _this_ development. She sobered as she realized the rest of the Sound Four were probably dead. She did _not_ want to be the one to inform him of that.

She reached for one of the pieces that was pinning her lap down, and tried to move it. Yeah, not moving that without any help.

She laid back, just thinking for a moment. Why hadn't he come looking for her? Or any of them? At the very least, he should have come to collect their bodies. They were his personal guard, after all. So where the fuck was he?

She _knew_ that he was absolutely obsessed with the Uchiha boy, but not to the extent that he would just toss them aside like some old, used toy. She was one of the _Sound fucking Four_. She had done everything he had asked! So when she finally got into a situation where she needed a bit of help, _where the hell was he_?

Her subconscious noted that she was questioning Orochimaru. Something that she hadn't done in years.

Ugh. It looked like she'd need to use the curse seal.

She hated it. She hated the concept of it. She hated the realization of it. She avoided it all costs. Every time she used it, it felt like her entire body had been dunked in something slimy like oil, and whenever she came out of it, she always had a terrible headache, and the sense that something had been violating her in the worst ways.

It was an incredible high. Addicting even. It made you feel absolutely invincible. But the drawbacks she felt completely soured the experience. Orochimaru had taken note of her complaints. And then done nothing about it, simply telling her to deal with it.

She could never get over the feeling that every time she used it, the headache was because it had been doing something.

When she'd first taken the curse seal when she was thirteen, he had promised that all it did was give her an extra 'kick'. Like adding a catalyst to a reaction. He'd even shown her notes on how it absorbed chakra from around her, stabilized it, and processed it so that her chakra system would be able to handle it. But now she was getting the feeling he had left a few things out. Why now?

Level 1 should be more than enough to handle this. She reached for the familiar tendril of taint that persisted in her chakra reserves, the link back to the curse seal, resigned to the terribly uncomfortable sensation in order to try and move the pieces that were trapping her.

"What. The. Fuck." It wasn't there.

She delved deeper, thinking maybe she had missed it, and her blackout had somehow screwed with her senses. It was just… missing. Like it had never existed in the first place.

She scrabbled at the edge of her neckline and pulled it over her left shoulder, twisting and contorting herself to try and find it. She vaguely realized her hands were shaking. Why?

There… there was nothing there. Her skin was like pure, uninterrupted cream. A nervous giggle bubbled up from her gut.

She was happy? Why was she happy? He would be furious! In fact, he'd probably make her into an experiment just to see _how_ the fuck she had managed to get rid of it, hoping that it would happen again. She would never see the light of day again. And yet, she couldn't stop laughing.

That would only happen _if_ he found out. Yes. If was good. Why was if good? Tayuya clutched at her head in frustration. It was like there were two voices battling for supremacy in her mind.

It should be physically impossible to remove the curse seal. Removing it from your neck did nothing. Even grafting skin to replace the external symbol did nothing, as that only solved a _symptom_, not the cause. And the symbol would just float back to the top anyways.

The way it worked, based on the pictures she had seen, was that it grew _into_ your chakra network, threading through all of your pathways until it hit your reserves in your midsection. This included going through paths that were intrinsically attached to vital organs.

Even in the subjects that failed the application (the ones who died, dumbass), there was still those telltale black tendrils and roots, twisting around in the body upon Orochimaru's scientific autopsy.

When you drew on it, it siphoned chakra out of your reserves, modified it, and then injected it straight back in, like some sort of weird purification system. Except it didn't purify. It _tainted_. Using the modified chakra had always felt like alcohol, addicting, fun, and great until the next day. Combustible, poisonous, and deadly were a few other similarities she could draw there. That was a great analogy.

So why was she thinking about the downsides so much _now_? She'd never really done that, just avoided using it when she could. The only thing that had changed was the disappearance of the curse seal. Orochimaru hadn't done anything with mind-altering seals… except for over a decade ago.

The blood drained from her face. "Oh Kami." There had been something in the seal. Some sort of loyalty and obedience directive. She vaguely recalled that the research notes she had read through covered suppressing higher-level brain functions, and the capability to question the person it was attuned to.

"Fucking shit on a stick."

Why hadn't she made that connection before now? Well, obviously the seal had been tampering and sabotaging her in that regard, but it had been _obvious_. A simple correlation! Had she not _wanted_ to believe he would do that to them? Subconsciously ignoring all of the little hints and things that pointed to him not being as considerate as she had thought?

That… was disturbing. But then again, none of the other Sound Four had ever seemed to have trouble with it. But they had also worshiped the ground upon which "Orochimaru-sama" had walked. Oh, she had done it too. Before the Konoha chunin exams, she'd seen him as some sort of invincible figure. Anything he wanted, he got. It had been that charisma that had drawn her to him. But when he had been defeated at the hands of the Third Hokage, she had started feeling like something was amiss.

Apparently he cared more about having loyal tools than ninja who could think their way out of a maze. It actually kind of explained a lot. Had they seriously believed that infiltrating a hidden village, and stealing one of its most prominent members wouldn't be noted? Well, perhaps it wouldn't have for long enough. But then! They had been defeated by six _genin_. (7 if she counted that wind chick.) It was a bit insulting to her abilities. All the Sound Four were supposed to be jounin-level. But that wasn't the point. Orochimaru had clearly held them in thrall.

The seal had been subtly warping their minds and brainwashing them, blocking and crushing thoughts of disloyalty or questions of his decisions.

There had been a few instances where she had seen him be rather cruel prior to the seal being applied, and the suspicions that he _didn't_ have their best interests in mind must have persisted even after its application.

And then there were a few other things to consider. After the Konoha Invasion, while they had been escaping, she had run past _Jiraiya_. The one man that Orochimaru had warned them never to engage, outside of that weird group with the black cloaks. That sort of attention was not the kind she wanted.

But what now?

She could go back to him, and he would put her right back where she had been, or worse experiment on her (and she had seen the things that had happened to those people). Or what? Run away?

Her mind, newly freed from a pressure it hadn't even known existed, struggled with the concept of freedom. She had been with Orochimaru for the past 7 years. And since she couldn't remember anything before she was seven, that technically accounted for more than half her life. What else did she know?

She vaguely noted that if the curse seal had still been applied, she probably would have jumped at the chance of returning to him. But now that she had full control of her mental faculties, _especially_ those that dealt with self-preservation and logic, she was questioning the purpose of that path.

This was some tough shit.

Okay. She had two options. On the one hand, she could go back to him. On the other, she could head in a different direction, living her life trying to stay under his radar, hoping he'd never catch notice of him. She realized her mind was still automatically prioritizing going against him as 'bad'.

Alright. Let's try that again.

She could go back, and _at best_ hope for a life of servitude, bound to a man that conducted highly questionable and unethical experiments. Or. She could leave, and attempt to live a new life, working towards attaining something meaningful.

It really seemed like a dumb question when she put it like that.

So what, she was just going to betray him now? He gave her food and shelter! But, he had also lied to her. He'd sworn not to do anything to harm her when she joined him, and this was obviously in direct violation of that.

That seemed to shut up the remaining part of her mind that still thought going back to him was the best course of action.

_I need to look out for myself, first. Just like before he came into my life._

Her mind was made up, and everything was quiet inside her brain.

It was strange. Her whole life had revolved around him. And now he was just… didn't matter. Exorcised from her life like a tumor by a simple decision. There was no curse seal connecting her, or clouding her thoughts.

She yelled out to the heavens, reveling in her new-found ability to oppose him.

"You're a fucking slimy cunt, Orochimaru!" That was nice. She needed that.

Now she had to get these fucking logs off of her.

No curse seal. Alright. She could work with that. She could temporarily reinforce her arms to let her lift them off, but it wouldn't last very long. So she'd need to be quick. She drew on some chakra, and threaded it to the muscles in her arms.

"Ouuuufff." Trees were heavy. No matter what anybody said. (Shouts of YOUTH! echoed back in Konoha) Even for a seventeen year-old kunoichi. Maybe someone with more muscles would have done better, but it was difficult for her. She maneuvered the trunk over her head and to the right, putting it down on the piece she was on top of.

She almost didn't want to look. She knew it wouldn't be pretty. But never let it be said that Tayuya was squeamish.

She glanced down. Oh fuck. That… was not good.

Her legs were, quite literally, mush. The muscle had been mashed to a paste, and she could see the white of bone in places she _knew_ it shouldn't be. In some areas, it appeared as if the entire bone had been crushed at once, leaving radial fractures and exposing pink marrow, at least until there was another break in the bone. Her knees were gone, nothing more than fragments showing there had even been something there. Her feet were only connected to her lower legs by thin strips of meat.

She was feeling pretty lightheaded. Was this what shock felt like?

It was hard associating this image with her own body, especially when she couldn't feel _any_ pain. Where the hell was it.?

She just sat there, in a daze. There was really nothing she could do. She was more surprised she hadn't bled out. Both her femoral arteries were exposed. Where was the blood that should have been coming out?

Something in her chest warmed up, and **tugged** on the chakra in her core, pulling it closer to her heart. Slightly disconcerted, she focused inward and tried to figure out what was happening. Something out of the corner of her eye moved, and she yanked her attention back to reality.

Her legs seemed to be healing. Tayuya watched in fascination as they began to knit back together, slowly picking up speed. She'd heard tales of Tsunade's _Sozo Saisen_ from Orochimaru, and how it could almost magically regenerate even lost limbs. But seeing her body just fix itself from a (most definitely) fatal wound, with only a minimal drain on her chakra threw Tayuya for a loop.

She looked closer, entranced by the morbid beauty of the sight. It seemed to be less _healing_, and more… something else. Shards of bone flew out of muscle, reassembling themselves into recognizable shapes before sinew ligaments and tendons flowed back over the bone. Torn muscle reconnected itself, the blood pooled around her sucked itself back into her femoral arteries and veins. And shredded skin moved like liquid, flattening itself out.

The best way she could think to describe it was that something had reversed what had happened to her legs. But that was insane. Time-space ninjutsu were notoriously finicky, and people who mastered them were (more often than not) considered gods among men. The Yellow Flash had fought the _Kyuubi_, and _won_.

The end result was that Tayuya was left with two _flawless_, _perfect_ legs. There was no hint of the scars she'd had before, not even the large slash on her thigh (from one of Kidomaru's arrows) that she'd gotten in a training session. She slowly moved them around, almost disbelieving. She had full mobility, though there was a bit of tightness.

"Well, fuck."

It seemed almost too good to be true. Every technique had its drawbacks. And just because she couldn't _immediately_ identify anything that was wrong, didn't mean that there wasn't some sort of terrible price. Especially since the chakra cost had been so low. For all she knew, it could be using her life-force or something, shortening her lifespan by _years_.

Brain kicking into gear, she resolved to deal with this new development when she was safer. Right now, she was in enemy territory, and uncomfortably close to Rice Country. She wanted to put as much distance between herself and the snake as she could.

Propping herself up, she swung her (new? old? healed?) legs over the side of the trunk she had been laying on. She silently landed on the soft forest floor, and stumbled a little from the tensing in her leg muscles. Not at all shocking considering they had looked like ground beef less than five minutes ago. She leaned against another nearby tree trunk, and thought about her options.

She wasn't going back to the snake. She had made up her mind. And the longer she thought about that decision, the more she was determined it was the correct one. Orochimaru's hold on her mind almost seemed like it was still lessening. If that was even possible.

Now… where to go? Her first thought was the further away from him the better. That pointed to Wind Country. But to get to Wind, she'd have to travel through the heart of Fire Country. And pass close by Konoha. And they were probably like a bee's nest right now. They would be on guard for a while. The Sound Four had woken the sleeping beast. And it was not happy. She did _not_ want to throw herself right back into where she had come from.

They'd put her in irons, throw her in a cell, and interrogate her for weeks. And while she would be more than willing to give them information, if word leaked back to Orochimaru, he'd have someone kill her in the dead of night. And he _did_ have sources in Konoha. So that was not an option.

Traveling east would bring her closer to Rice Country and, by proxy, the Orochimaru. That was also not an option. Until she figured out exactly what sort of damage the curse seal had done to her psyche, she was going to be trying to stay as far away from that bastard as possible.

The furthest she could go west in a single day was somewhere like Waterfall Country, if she kept to the borders. The capitol of Waterfall was actually near the border with Fire Country. And they would definitely have things she needed. Like somewhere to sleep. And food. That seemed like it might be the best course of action. She could get to Taki in three hours, maybe two, if she really pushed herself.

Waterfall Country it would be.

* * *

><p>Tree running gave her the chance to think over her life the past few years.<p>

Orochimaru had always been a bit of a gamble. Now that she was out from under the influence of the seal, she could recognize that he was a cruel bastard. But she had also thought he didn't throw away the things that he had put effort into. Not that she was thinking of going back now. It was just… her beliefs about the snake were being called into question.

She had also thought him to be a man of his word, but the side-effects of the curse mark had shown her how wrong that was. What else had he lied about? She knew that the Sound Four had been little more than tools to him, but she thought he would at least honor his side of the oath to her.

Then again, he _had_ shown himself to stab partners in the back as long as it suited his goals. She had foolishly believed that the same would not happen to her. Not helped at all by the curse seal whispering sweet nothings in her mind, of course. Everything came back to the seal. She could explain being naïve at ten. But to be so deluded as to believe that Orochimaru wouldn't, _couldn't_ betray her like she had seen countless times? Either she was naturally delusional, or artificially. And based on how lucid and clear her mind felt now, she could definitely count this in the 'artificial' column.

Suddenly, the trees came to a clearing. It wasn't the lack of trees, but the sight in front of her that had Tayuya halt and nearly fall off of the branch she was perched on.

"Holy shit. What the hell happened here?"

For as far as the eye could see, until the beginning of trees on the opposite side, was a sea of white _things_. It was like some god had decided to turn this part of the land into a personal pincushion. On second glance, they appeared almost organic. But nothing organic looked this white… _except bone_.

"KIMIMARO!" Against her mind screaming at her to run away, she ran towards the only shape that marred the perfect white sea.

She had never seen him in his cursed seal form. Ever. Before contracting his illness, he had been able to take on all the Sound Four at once while they were in Stage One without needing it.

_What could have pushed you to go so far?_

She drew up to mutated form of the Kaguya. His eyes were still open, focused on something that must have been only a few feet in front of him. Dry blood colored the corners of his mouth.

_So it finally did you in._

Kimimaro's illness was honestly the only thing she could imagine him succumbing to. Everything else was just a goal to be completed, given to him by his 'Orochimaru-sama'. He had never failed, never been defeated.

"You _idiot_." She sighed. Kimimaro had been hopelessly loyal to Orochimaru, even before the curse seal. If he was still alive now, there was no doubt that he would have been the one that Orochimaru sent to kill her, and he would have happily ended her life with his own hands.

Closing his eyes, she clapped her hands and said a prayer of ease in passing to the next life. She could at least afford him this much respect as a former comrade, and if not, at least for the way he had died in battle.

This had been her only days ago. Completely devoted to Orochimaru: mind, body, and soul. Delusional to the point of blindly following and clinging to his every word. Submitting to his every whim. Those thoughts now scared her to the depths of her very soul.

Making her way to the other edge of the clearing, she looked back once, and shuddered. If there was someone who could push Kimimaro that far, she wanted nothing to do with them, especially be on the other side of a fight.

Jumping through foliage once more, slowly making her way west, she thought about what she'd need to do.

She would have to be wary of Orochimaru's retribution for abandoning him. If he became aware she was still alive, he would more than likely send someone to kill her. If not just out of spite, then to ensure that she didn't reveal any of his secrets. She would need to lay low for a while, avoiding any and all attention. Especially from shinobi.

First things first, a change of clothes.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. Her hat had fallen off in the middle of battle, so there was nothing to do about that. Her rope belt had been discarded in her effort to free herself from underneath the pile of logs.

It was her shirt and pants that had taken the most damage. Her shirt was torn and bloodied, the Sound Four's signature yang-yang emblem missing. _That's one good thing at least_ One less identifier for anyone to catch onto.

The real problem was that her skintight black shorts were completely shredded. At this point, they _barely_ served the purpose of preserving her dignity. She might not care much about modesty (growing up with four other guys tended to do that), but it would still be hard to explain walking into a town without any pants on.

After she had purchased new clothes, room and board would become the top priority. While she could fast for a few days and not suffer any bad effects, it was not comfortable. And something soft to sleep on for the night would be go a long way to making her muscles feel less sore.

But then what? She had no real skills outside combat. It was times like these that she regretted not branching out. Some of the more obscure ninja arts, like fuinjutsu or iryojutsu were very useful outside of battle, and would even be skills that could bring income. Unfortunately, Tayuya had personally learned from Kabuto that she did not have the temperament nor the control for being a medic. Fuinjutsu, on the other hand, had to be taught by a seal master. Or the one learning tended to blow themselves up with a malformed seal. And while fuinjutsu _was_ something she was interested in, the number of seal masters she knew of could be counted on one hand, much less ones who would be willing to teach her.

Music was the only real hobby she had, but playing for other people? Baring her songs for the masses? She would be more comfortable with waltzing naked through Konoha. The ones she used to control her doki were simple tunes (comparatively). But the ones she wrote, that no one but her had every heard, they were her _soul_. She could not compose a song that did not reflect herself at some base, inner level. And she would **die** before anyone knew the contents of those.

So music was clearly out. Perhaps she could ask around at the place she stayed and see if anyone needed help. As long as it wasn't dealing with customers. Tayuya was well aware of her language problems. She just didn't care. Yeah, dealing with a couple of bad customers would have her fired faster than she could say "fuck". She'd just have to cross her fingers and hope for the best.

* * *

><p>The light that filtered through the trees slowly began to take on an orange hue, and Tayuya noted that she'd been running for close to 3 hours now, long enough that she would soon cross the (invisible) border into Taki. Since she was crossing from Iron into Taki, the village that she was aiming for would be slightly less than half an hour away.<p>

The tightness in her legs had eased, but the hours of running were beginning to catch up to her. She had had no water, except for a couple streams Tayuya had come across early in her journey. But with no way to transport it, she had only been able to drink a little before needing to move on. She wasn't feeling hungry, but that was fairly typical. Part of her ninja training had required going for long periods of time without food, and she had developed a distinct lack of appetite during that time.

A ninja couldn't be distracted by hunger in the middle of a battle, so she had trained herself to not feel hunger. Eating was instead done on a schedule when not on a mission, and when convenient when on one. If the Sound Four had known they were going into a dangerous situation, they didn't eat at all for a day before that. There were downsides to not feeling hunger, such as the potential to starve to death without noticing, but Tayuya had never really had any problems with it so far.

Thirst was easier to deal with, simply carrying enough water to last a day, and then replenishing that whenever there was an available water source. Unfortunately, since Sasuke's abduction was supposed to be a quick in-and-out, she had neglected to bring her water pouch with her. And since that was at Orochimaru's base with the rest of her (admittedly few) things, there was no chance of her seeing it ever again.

Orochimaru had required them to live simply, ready to pick up and leave to another of his hidey-holes at a moment's notice. The thing she had treasured the most, her flute, had always been on her. The only other things she really had were ninja tools and a couple scrolls on music as a vehicle for auditory genjutsu intended for beginners. She was so far beyond them that it was laughable. So there wasn't anything that she really regretted leaving behind. Her flute, though. She took a moment to feel sadness at its loss and anger at herself for letting her pride get the best of her. It had slipped from her fingers just as the tree she had been standing on was hit by that wind girl's attack. And then only a few feet in front of her face, a blade of wind had sliced it in half.

_I'm lucky it wasn't me that got hit by that._

It wasn't that the flute itself was special, in fact, it was actually fairly simple and low-quality. But it had been with her for years, and she had grown attached to it. She didn't blame the bitch for its' destruction, but she still resented it. And if they were ever on opposite sides of a fight again, maybe that fan would make a good battle trophy. Otherwise, she would let it go.

One of the core tenants of being a ninja that most people seemed to forget was that a shinobi had to let go of their emotions on the battlefield. This included petty things like revenge. Unfortunately, even the most experienced shinobi sometimes succumbed to their emotions, leading to things as terrible as war. She had seen it first hand. Had felt it.

She would never forget the bloodline purges of Kiri. How because 'normal' shinobi succumbed to their fear of the power of a family's bloodline, they committed mass genocide in the name of 'cleansing the ranks'. It had been one of her first missions as a ninja for Orochimaru. Go and 'collect' bloodline samples. She had selectively ignored that the samples were living humans, to be transported in the dead of night to a designated drop off area. As a new ninja, she was unprepared for the terrible things she witnessed. Sure, she had killed (in the sterile environment of one of Orochimaru's labs), but seeing families turn against each other? Sister against brother, parent against child? Killing as though those gifted with special abilities were nothing more than a diseased dog that needed to be put down, simply from fear? She had never been more glad than in that moment that Orochimaru had found her. Because _this could have been her_.

At that, she had sworn to never let emotions compromise her ability as a ninja or influence her decisions. As a shinobi, she was a living breathing weapon. And weapons did not have emotions. But when not acting as an official ninja, she was a person. And people did have emotions. But her two sides were separate, and she worked never to let them overlap. Whenever she was in a fight, it was like a switch was flipped. She was no longer "Tayuya", she was "The North Gate". She had relied on Orochimaru's hand to direct her, because she herself had no will when acting as a shinobi.

Unlike what most people assumed, the personality she used in battle had no true feelings behind it. It was merely a hollow façade modeled after her normal self. Inside, she became cold, logical, and calculating. It had never failed her, until now. She had lost control in her fight with the shadow user, and became arrogant in her abilities. And it had led to her defeat. It was a mistake she would not let repeat.

* * *

><p>The trees in front of her suddenly parted, and houses and shops sprung up in her sight. A short, small booth sat in the middle of the road, and in it stood a man who looked more an assistant than a guard. She decided not to deal with him, and hopped down onto the road just beyond it.<p>

The capital appeared to be laid out well, with inns and restaurants for travelers near the edge. On a second look, they also appeared to be the most expensive. She decided to look around further in to see if there was anything cheaper. The limited amount of money she had for emergencies that she carried in a small storage scroll, secured inside her breast bindings on her right side, would not be able to fund both clothes and a nights rest at those rates.

Wandering around the main roads, she finally found a shop that had simple synthetic leggings, close enough to what she was already wearing that she wouldn't notice the difference. When she entered, the woman at the counted had wrinkled her nose at the sight of her shorts, and Tayuya made a concerted effort to ignore the hag, so that her mouth wouldn't get her thrown out. After paying the cashier, she counted her money and groaned. The new pants had required a third of her funds. And they had been the cheapest she could find in the area. Taking the pants from the counter, she stepped into the dressing room and tore the price tag from them. Removing her sandals and then shimmyied out of her (almost nonexistent) shorts. And then she saw the state of her underwear. Biting her tongue so the cashier wouldn't hear the stream of obscenities flowing through her mind, she thought about what her options were. They weren't really any better off than her pants. That is to say, completely shredded. But she couldn't afford a new pair _and_ still find a place stay. And that was what clinched it. She would just have to go commando for a few days.

Moving to take off the offending pair of boyshorts, she just sighed as they literally disintegrated beneath her touch. Slipping into her new pants, she stretched them out so that the her skin would get used to the material quicker. It wasn't like this was the first time she had gone underwear-less, but it was still annoying.

Quickly exiting the shop, she moved off of the main roads. She would have better luck with cheaper lodges away from centers of economic activity. Slowly making her way down a small, dirt road lined by western-style two-story houses, she saw one that appeared to have a sign in front of it. Moving across the street, she could read the sign that proudly proclaimed "Izumo Inn".

_Well, at least it should be cheaper than some of the places on the main street_

Walking up to the door, she could hear muffled arguing coming from inside.

A loud, warm baritone echoed through the door as footsteps seemed to be coming closer.

"Be quiet, woman. I said I'd do it, and I'll damn well do it. I'll get to it when I– Oh. Hello there, pretty lady. Sorry, didn't even hear you knock." The apparent owner of the voice was a wrinkled man with fading grey hair and warm brown eyes that seemed to sparkle as soon as they had seen her. "Are you looking for a room?"

Tayuya blushed despite herself. It wasn't often she was called pretty, even in passing. She had been caught off guard. "Y-Yeah. I am. And I didn't. Knock." She stumbled over her words, forcing them out by sheer will.

"Maaaa. No matter. What matters is you're here, and you need a place to stay." He turned back towards the genkan. "YOMI! WE GOT A LIVE ONE!"

"Um, I don't have much to pay you wi–"

"Don't need it. We'd put you up even if you couldn't." With that, the man's eyes hardened, allowing her no room to argue. And then quickly shifted back to warm. "We just like helpin' people."

A short woman came around the corner into the entryway. She appeared to be close to the same age as the man in front of Tayuya, but her hair fell in waves of amber to her shoulders, while her eyes were a sharp blue. "Oooh isn't she adorable! You just come in. Don't mind Shin."

The man, now identified as Shin, stepped aside to let her into the doorway, closing the door as she entered. Remembering her manners (the few that she still had), she slipped her sandals off her feet and stepped onto the small ledge.

The woman, who she assumed was Yomi, spoke up. "Why don't we go to the front room so we can discuss your stay, hm? I'll just go get some tea." With that, she disappeared around the corner again.

Shin moved around Tayuya and began walking towards one of the rooms on the right. "We don't really get much use for the room, so Yomi jumps at every opportunity to use it."

He slid open the door and motioned for her to move in. Inside, there were cushions arranged around a table that rose to about mid-calf. Tayuya internally grimaced. Seiza was not a position she enjoyed being in. Shin walked around to the other side of the table, and lowered himself into sitting cross-legged with a satisfied sigh. Looking up, he saw Tayuya's expression of relief. "What, you didn't think we were gonna make you sit on your knees did ya? Hell, I can't stand it even if I could still sit like that."

Taking a seat at the cushion on the opposite side of the table, she allowed her muscles to slowly relax. Not too much, she still needed to be ready if anything happened, but enough that she didn't feel like a wound spring anymore. The door to the left of Tayuya slid open, and Yomi entered with a tray of earthenware cups. Setting the tray on the table, she shut the door behind her, and then took the next to Shin, sitting with her legs to her side. Taking a cup off of the tray, she passed it to Tayuya. She gave the next one to Shin, and then put the last one in front of herself.

Shin opened his mouth "So wha–". Yomi swatted his leg, cutting him off.

"Be quiet and drink your tea first. Don't let it go cold."

Rolling his eyes, Shin picked up his cup, and motioned for Tayuya to do the same. Cautiously, minding the temperature of the liquid (and in case it had any poisons), she took a sip. Her eyes shot open.

"Good stuff, huh? Yomi makes the best tea."

"Oh, hush you. Flattery will get you nowhere." But a smile still curled at the edges of her mouth.

They sat for a few minutes, merely enjoying the tea before it grew cold.

"So. As I was saying. What brings you to Se-shi, the city of raging water?" Shin asked.

Being mindful of her language, Tayuya thought up an appropriate response. "I'm just passing through. I only wanted to rest for a few days before leaving."

Shin nodded sagely. "We can easily put you up for a few days." He narrowed his eyes and looked at her. Tayuya shifted uncomfortably beneath his gaze. "But it seems like you've got something else to ask, too."

She was slightly disconcerted by how easily this old man was reading her. "I was thinking about looking for somewhere to work. I don't really have any money, and these are my only clothes due to an …unfortunate event."

"Well, we'll do what we can to help."

Tayuya's face betrayed her shock at their apparent ease of assisting her when she had nothing to give in return.

"Is that really so hard to believe? I already told you: we like helping people. Anyways, about the job. I don't really know anyone in the city who's looking for work, but a friend of mine up in Takigakure usually needs help around this time of year. Something about some kind of festival."

Tayuya froze. Going to Takigakure would be pushing her luck. As far as she knew, she hadn't made it into their bingo book, but the place was still swarming with potential enemy ninja.

Shin must have misread her, because he simply waved a hand and continued. "No need to be nervous, I'm sure you'd do just fine."

Yomi, who had been silently listening to Shin talk, spoke up. "Thinking about it, we might have some clothes left from when Sei-chan was still living here. I'd have to look in the attic to be sure."

Shin nodded, his eyes closed. "Seikyo's clothes would probably fit you. You're about the same size."

"About paying–"

He held up his hand and stopped her. "Don't worry about it. Really. The money would be better of with you anyways, from what I can tell." Yomi 'hm-ed' in agreement. "If that's all, Yomi can show you your room."

"Just follow me, dear"

Standing up, Shin collected the empty cups and the tray. Tayuya followed Yomi through the door that led to the hallway, and then further back into the house to a set of stairs. "Your room will be the first door on the left just at the top. Not that there's anyone else. Dinner is at 8." Yomi walked away towards another part of the house in the opposite direction.

Tayuya felt like she had just walked through a tornado. What the hell had just happened? It had gone too quickly for her to even say anything against them.

Tayuya went up the staircase, and was surprised at the number of doors on the second floor. There must have been eight or nine. _And all of these are empty?_ Opening the first door on the left, she entered a modest size-room with a simple layout. A single bed sat in the back corner, with a dresser as the foot of it. Curtains hung over a window that looked out on the back yard of the house. It was colored a pale yellow, warm, but not blinding.

There wasn't much to do, except just sit and wait. Well, she _could_ go take a bath. She eyed the bloodstains on her arms. Yeah. A bath would do her some good.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

Some would say that I'm writing Tayuya OOC. Yes. That's the point. You can't have her go through something like willingly deciding to leave Orochimaru without having something change. I've seen some stories where she comes out of that incident being none the worse for the wear. It's not terribly realistic. When you do something like abandoning the main focus of your life (whether in self-preservation or otherwise), that decision tends to cascade into other personality traits and actions, and causes a lot of thinking. That's not to say I'm unwilling to suspend my disbelief for the sake of a good premise (this is fan fiction, after all), but I still prefer more complex realistic characters.

Anyways! Lots of exciting stuff for our favorite foul-mouthed female. Lots of questions. The biggest one is obviously "Why is she not dead?".

Read! Review! Leave me hate mail stuck to a brick thrown through my window! (I'd honestly like to see you try, double-pane hurricane glass is really hard stuff to break)

But seriously, try and keep the comments civil, appropriate, and on-topic.

ensou


	2. A Matter of Trust

**Disclaimer:**

Did shinobi regularly go through traumatic events, without having any required therapy or mental evaluations? If so, I don't own Naruto, or any of that universe.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Two<strong>  
><strong>A Matter of Trust<strong>

Tayuya woke in a cold sweat. Her heart was pounding rapidly, thudding like the beat of drums. The dream she had been having quickly faded into a haze, and she grasped at the few threads of it that remained. All she could remember was a man with off-color red hair leaning over her, whispering something, and then inky darkness. She gripped the sheets of the bed tighter, vainly searching for any sort of remnant of the dream, anything, but there was nothing.

Sitting up in the bed (bed?), she tried to remember where she was. This wasn't her room at any of Orochimaru's various bolt-holes, as those all had futons in the rooms for simplicity's sake. Suddenly _very_ awake, she glanced around the room, scanning for potential threats. And then the previous day came rushing back. All of the things that had happened.

How she had been sent to ferry that Uchiha brat with the rest of the Sound Four. How Konoha's retrieval team (which they'd been trying to avoid completely by doing this at night) had slowly split the group up. How she had gotten paired with another Yin-chakra user, a shadow-wielder. How she had almost defeated him before her emotions had gotten the best of her, and that wind-bitch came in and sliced up the forest.

And _that_ wasn't even the weird stuff.

How she had woken up, with her legs crushed, and couldn't even feel pain. How the curse seal was suddenly gone, as though it was never there. How she was _instantly_ willing to turn her back on Orochimaru. How, after extracting her legs from beneath the crushing weight of the trees, she had been healed, better than before. How she had traveled for hours non-stop (had she really not stopped?), and then arrived in the capitol of Waterfall Country. How she had found this inn... place, and had decided to stay _after only a few minutes in the company of the owners_.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. That was a rookie mistake. She knew better than that. Never trust strangers in unknown territory. Luckily, she hadn't been drugged or anything (that she could tell), and the owners _seemed_ sincere enough.

The conversation from dinner floated to the front of her mind, and Tayuya groaned as she realized that she had given them her real name. She really should have been more careful. A seasoned ninja _shouldn't_ have done those things. It appeared that all of the events yesterday, while not outwardly traumatizing, had left her off-balance and vulnerable. At least it seemed that she hadn't gotten herself into a situation she couldn't handle one way or another. Especially now that she was on her own, without the others to deal with.

Shifting her legs off the mattress, she stood and walked quietly over to the window. The sun was just over the horizon, so it couldn't have been too early. The grass in the backyard glistened in the warm light, and she allowed herself a brief moment in the sun, letting it warm her arms and face.

Muffled sound came from the floor, and she decided it would be best just to get this over with. Her clothes from yesterday (old shirt, new shorts) were on a chair in the corner, and she went over and put the pants on. The oversized white shirt that Yomi had shoved into her arms as Tayuya had been going upstairs would have to do for now.

Going out into the hallway, Tayuya almost tripped over a large cardboard box sitting just to the side of the door. Cursing under her breath, she bent down to get a better look. In large, bold characters, it had "Seikyo's Old Clothes" written on the top in some sort of permanent marker. By this point, if the owners hadn't tried anything, she was _probably_ safe.

Opening the box, she was surprised by how much was in it. Formal and informal kimono, a couple beautifully patterned yukata, some simple tops (long-sleeve, short-sleeve, and sleeveless), and three pairs of divided hakama. And that was just at the top of the box. Reaching in and pulling out one of the tank-tops, she moved back into the room.

She shucked the rather large t-shirt off, and frowned at the bit of black that peaked out of the top of her breast wrap. Last night after dinner, she had taken a short shower before going to sleep. She had been shocked to find a rather large diamond-shaped _thing_ on her chest while removing the wrap. She had completely freaked out (silently of course) for a couple minutes before calming down.

It sat between her breasts, reaching from just below the top of her sternum to the base. It appeared to be some sort of stylized knot, with no beginning nor end, but was made up of absolutely minuscule kanji. If she hadn't looked closely, she would have mistaken it for a tattoo. But the characters that made it up had given it away. It was some sort of seal. But far more complex and compressed than anything she had ever seen, even in Orochimaru's research.

It hadn't been there yesterday, which gave some weight to the theory that it might be responsible for that weird healing had occurred. And at the same time, she somehow knew in her gut, that this was _not_ a seal she wanted undone. Unlike the curse seal, which she disliked while it was present, and hated now that it wasn't, she knew that somehow, this seal was important for her well-being.

It _seemed_ to be only benevolent or benign. Her cautious side warned her that she should still seek out a seal master and see if they had any ideas on the what the hell it _actually_ did. She wouldn't want them messing with it, but it would be important to get as much information as possible. Regardless, she was stuck with it, and she could handle not knowing for a short while.

Relaxing her expression from what Jirobu called her "frowning, thinking face", she reached for the tank top and put it on. Delicious smells wafted in to the room from downstairs, and Tayuya's brain thought that breakfast sounded like a _wonderful_ idea. Walking down the stairs, the sounds of Shin and Yomi talking about something (miso paste thickness?) came from the room where they had had dinner the night before.

She walked in as silently as she could, but Shin still perked up and turned around to greet her.

"Well good morning, young lady. Get enough of your beauty sleep?"

She flushed and just nodded. If one of the boys had said that to her, she would have punched their lights out for it. She didn't really know how to respond to someone like Shin teasing her though.

"Come on and sit down, we just started eating." Shin said, motioning at one of the free seats around the low table. Unlike the front room where they had had tea, this room had a short table at the center, and a recessed floor beneath it where you put your legs. Cushions sat around the table, so that a person didn't have to sit on the floor.

She moved around the table and sat down cross-legged, serving herself some rice, miso soup, and a piece of fish from the dishes surrounding her.

"Oh good, I'm glad you found the clothes", Yomi said. _More like nearly broke my goddamn toes on them._ "So how do they fit? Do they work alright?"

"Uh, yeah. '_If a bit girly_.' You're really giving them to me? Just like that?" Tayuya asked. There had been a lot, and she hadn't even gone through the whole box.

"Well yes, I don't see us using them. And Seikyo-chan's outgrown them by far." Yomi frowned. "So really it's up to you if you want to take them all or not. Do you not like them?"

Tayuya backpedaled. "No! I'm not trying to be ungrateful, it's just, there were some very expensive looking yukata and kimono." They were a bit on the flowery side for her tastes, but beggars can't be choosers. Plus she'd have to deal with transporting them, though a simple storage seal could take care of that.

Yomi's expression softened. "Yes, they're for you. Every girl needs to be able to dress up every so often. Even ninja like yourself."

**What.**

Tayuya's blood froze in her veins, her heart suddenly beating three times as fast. Her face hardened, and she wondered if she could kill the two of them, and then get out of town before anyone noticed.

Chopsticks or knife? Chopsticks were in her hand, but the serrated butter knife on her place mat would probably be balanced better, even if it didn't pierce as easily.

A wave of killing intent suddenly rolled over her, and then disappeared just as quick.

"Tayuya!" Her hand unconsciously moved to throw the chopsticks. "Whoa. Easy there." She noted that the pair of them hadn't even really moved, other than Shin holding his hands up. Why weren't they fighting back?

"Calm down. We're not doing anything. See? Nothing's wrong, nobody's going to hurt you." With no small amount of effort, she moved her hand back to where it had been resting at the edge of the table. What was going on?

Shin sighed. "Jeez, it's like you're on a hair trigger." Seeing that she at least wasn't about to attack them, Shin brought his hands down. "You _really_ could have brought that up a little better, ya know?"

Yomi tittered away behind a hand, while her eyes twinkled. "Allow an old woman her simple pleasures."

Shin rolled his eyes in exasperation. "She was seconds away from trying to kill us. I don't think that's worth it."

"You could have handled her." What? Shin didn't look like he could hurt a fly, much less a kunoichi in her prime.

"So? Doesn't mean I want to, this early in the morning."

Tayuya attempted to regain what little sanity seemed to remain in the situation.

"B-but. Wha-. When? How?" So eloquent.

"Girl, we knew you were a ninja the second you walked in the door. It changes how you walk, how you act. Not many shinobi know how to blend back in with the normal people after living like that for very long. You stood out like a sore thumb."

"Then why did you just let me in? You could have turned me in or something!" She was so confused.

"Because you didn't give us any reason to." Shin replied. Yomi nodded at this, and Shin's eyes hardened.

"Oh, don't think I wasn't prepared. If you had shown any signs of intending to hurt us, you would have found yourself dead quicker than you could blink. I wasn't known as the _Shi no Shinigami_, the _Reaper of Death_, for nothing." He rubbed his head, looking a little embarrassed at the admission.

"Maa. Those days are behind me. Thank Kami I was allowed to retire after the last Shinobi War. Point is, this is an inn. We help people. When you showed up on the doorstep yesterday, you needed a place to rest. And luckily, we could help with that. I like to think that what we do now makes up for all the shit I had to do in the war."

Tayuya deflated. There went her conspiracy theories and (seemingly justified) paranoia.

"To be honest, you seemed kinda lost. Still do." Yomi made an affirmative 'hmm'.

"Now that you know about us, well, me at least, and that we're not gonna hurt you, maybe you can tell us what's going on? See if we can't seem to do somethin' about it."

Tayuya opened her mouth to tell them to fuck off. That it wasn't their business, their _right_, to pry into her life. She was cut off by Yomi, who got up from the table and went to the kitchen. When she came back, she had a cup of hot tea in her hands. She set it down in front of Tayuya. "When you're ready, dear", she said, sitting back at her place.

Tayuya's mouth clicked shut. They had been nothing but kind to her. Maybe, just maybe, could she tell someone else? She'd never really had anyone to be there for her before. But these two strangers had done more for her in the past twelve hours than anyone else had before. So could she trust them? Small steps. Maybe just talking about how she got into the city first.

"I was in a fight yesterday." Shin's face shifted into a deadpan expression, as if to convey '_you don't say_'.

"I-I guess that was pretty obvious with my clothes, huh?" Her hands felt uncomfortable not doing anything, and she moved to continue eating her rice. "Well, that fight brought a lot of things I believed in into question. Like my employer."

"You didn't know if you could trust them anymore." Shin said, nodding. "Lotta missing-nin feel the same way when they defect." His eyes narrowed. "But I get the feeling you weren't affiliated with a village."

How did he guess that? "I wasn't. Not really." Ugh. This was uncomfortable. "I worked for some_one_ not some_where_" She fidgeted, twirling her chopsticks.

"Who?" Yomi asked.

Tayuya took a breath and sighed. "Orochimaru."

Shin whistled. "The snake sannin? I heard stories of him in the war. Before he dropped off the radar. There've been some nasty rumors about him coming out of Fire Country."

She put her chopsticks down, and reached for the cup of tea, now that it should be sufficiently cool. She was trying to keep a straight face. Not to let her emotions boil over. Orochimaru was a sore spot right now.

"They're probably all true. And more." She took a sip to calm herself. "He's a monster wearing human skin. Literally." Yomi's face became questioning.

"He's been trying to find a way to become immortal, and his current method involves invading others' bodies and taking control. In the process, he lost every last shred of his own humanity. He's a giant white snake that pretends to be human." At this, they both turned a little green. She didn't blame them.

"It gets worse."

Tears began to leak from her eyes, and she shifted her head down to look at the cup of tea in her hands, hiding her face from them. "He uses a seal, similar to the enslavement seals that were outlawed a century ago. It invades your body. Becomes impossible to remove. I thought that was all it did." Why was she crying? She wasn't some weak little girl.

She took a shuddering breath. Why was she telling them all this? She didn't really know anymore. But it felt good, telling someone. "Yesterday, I found out it fucks with your mind too. Turns you into a sycophant. The 'perfect little soldier'. I just didn't care while it was happening." It was utterly crushing, knowing that someone had that much power over you. Especially in hindsight.

_At least we were only influenced towards being better tools, instead of becoming mindless experiments_, she thought bitterly. The tears were really coming out now, and she quickly wiped them away and took another deep breath, trying to calm her thoughts and emotions, even if just a little.

This was a completely new experience for her. It was uncomfortable baring herself this much. Being this vulnerable. Not even the boys had ever seen her like this. She looked up. At least they didn't seem to be pitying her. She wouldn't know what she would do if they acted like that.

"I can remember thinking that he was amazing, like he was the greatest man on earth, before I started fighting it. And yesterday, after my fight, it disappeared. The seal was just... gone. And I could think for myself again."

Her face twisted into rage. "I was **disgusted**. How could he do that to us? I gave him my life!" At this confession, her emotions boiled over, and she broke down, sobbing. She wasn't weak, right? Yomi moved around the table, drawing her up into a hug. How long had it been since she had human contact like this? A decade? More? She couldn't remember the last time someone had hugged her. Shin suddenly looked very old, and seemed to be in thought. Yomi just held her as she cried. It was so embarrassing, but it felt so _right_ to let it all out.

After that, her walls crumbled, and the rest of the story slowly came out. What it was like growing up, being slowly groomed by him. How hard the training had been. All the years that she could remember, up until the incident yesterday. She left nothing out.

She almost pulled her breast wrap down, to show them the new seal. But Yomi stopped her, to "preserve her feminine dignity". Even though, as Shin put it, "It wasn't anything he hadn't seen before". They took a break from talking around lunchtime, to give everyone (mostly Tayuya, and she knew it) a chance to settle their emotions.

* * *

><p>They had a simple lunch, as Yomi didn't have time to prepare anything special. Plain rice with steamed pork and vegetables. Leftovers from the night before with new rice. Tayuya didn't mind. She didn't really pay attention to the food anyway. She was more focused on the couple across from her. They communicated with almost no words, just a movement or a glance, and Tayuya realized that they must have been married for a long time to reach that level of familiarity.<p>

She'd never allowed anyone to get close to her, instead maintaining an abrasive, brush personality to keep them away. Her frequent cursing reflected that. Not that she really cared what anyone else thought. She had never sought the approval of anyone other than Orochimaru, and he hadn't cared. All he had cared about was how effeciently they worked.

They finished lunch, and Yomi took the dishes out to the kitchen to be washed later, before returning to the table and sitting to the right of Shin.

Shin started off. "So. It looks like you've got a couple options, and a few choices to make." What did that mean? Were they going to kick her out or something? They must have picked up her impression, because Shin immediately went on. "You're more welcome to stay here for a while."

"However, that may not be the best option. For one, if Orochimaru hears about you staying here, there's no ninja corps in Se-shi. You'd be on your own for dealing with him. Despite what I like to think, I'm in no shape for a tussle with sannin." She frowned. He had a point that she hadn't thought of.

"In that line of thinking, I can send message to my friend in Takigakure, the one I mentioned before. Then you can travel up there a couple days later. That way he can vouch for you, and you'd be in a pretty safe area if anything happened. Taki wouldn't take too kindly to Orochimaru showing up, and I doubt he'd want to deal with open conflict in a hidden village, despite, no _especially_ with what happened in Konoha." She had told them how he had lost the use of both his arms, and now had to rely on Kabuto to do almost everything.

They had already done so much for her. And now she would just be leaving without doing anything in return. She said as much.

Yomi smiled kindly. "Don't worry about it, dear. Everyone needs help now and then. The best way you can pay us back is by coming back to visit and telling us about how you're doing. I worry enough about our daughter, and now you too." Tayuya was taken aback by the level of sincerity in her statement. Only a day, and they considered her on the same level as their _daughter_?

Swallowing her pride, she stepped back and kneeled in the traditional show of deep gratitude, forehead touching the ground. Voice hitching, it was all she could do to say:

"Thank you"

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

As always, please review!

See you in a week!

ensou


	3. A Strange Girl

**Disclaimer: **

Did anybody ever try to befriend Naruto because they saw how bad his situation was? If not, I don't own Naruto, nor any of that universe.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 3:<strong>  
><strong>A Strange Girl<strong>

Tayuya hitched the traveling pack higher on her shoulders. She was on the road to Takigakure, but walking instead of tree-running like usual. It was actually rather relaxing, despite the pace she was setting for herself. Waterfall Country was mostly forest, similar to Fire Country, and the trees provided a cool relief from the beating sun. The reason she was walking was so that she wouldn't draw the attention of any local shinobi, and _acting_ like a ninja would do exactly that.

Luckily, there was a direct road from Se-shi to the Hidden Waterfall Village. It was a long day's trip by walking (only 3 hours running), but she was determined to do it in one day. Yoshida (Shin's friend) had said he'd be at the gates both today and tomorrow, but she didn't want to deal with sleeping outside if she could help it. Because of that, she had woken up bright and early, only eating a small breakfast with Shin and Yomi, to make sure she had enough time.

The backpack (and its contents) had been a gift from Shin. It was his old traveling pack from when he had to do long-term missions. Inside were scrolls, a large bottle of water, and a very large lunch that Yomi had made the night before "to make sure she didn't go hungry". The scrolls contained the clothes Yomi had given her, but there were also a few that Shin had written himself that contained a couple of his techniques. Seikyo hadn't become a ninja, so he had no one to teach them to. _Apparently_ he had decided that she was the next best candidate. The scrolls he'd sent with her were basic chakra exercises that she was already half-way done with, but he promised to send along more once she had mastered them.

The past week she had spent with them had been both relaxing and enlightening.

Yomi had taken her under her wing, and the woman had been dead-set on teaching Tayuya proper cooking methods. Tayuya had been embaraased to admit that she didn't really know much about cooking, and couldn't do much more than boil water. Now, she could at least cook rice and fish, and make a passable set of steamed vegetables. While cooking, she had told her about Seikyo, their daughter. Seikyo had moved to Ame for a job, doing "something with weird plastic" that was apparently both very technical, and lucrative. She still visted every year, but couldn't get away from her job very often.

Shin had told her stories of the Third Shinobi World War, and taught her some of the more advanced chakra techniques. She had soaked up his lessons on nature transformation like a wet sponge, and the things he had taught her helped Tayuya understand some of her own techniques. Her ability to use Yin-chakra was more of a genetic trait, and she didn't consciously create it, it just existed when she needed it.

They had found that she had a dual affinity of water and wind, which had been a little surprising. Shin had a wind nature, and was able to show her the basic exercises for that nature, but he had no idea where to start with water. What was really shocking (for both Tayuya and Shin) was that evidently she was some sort of prodigy with nature conversion, managing to split a piece of paper between her palms in less than half a day.

His stories about the war were not nearly as cheerful, but no less captivating or educational. During the Third Shinobi War, he had been a part of an ANBU-level assassination squad, which explained how assured and calm he had been during their confrontation that first morning. Even at 62, he could still beat her six ways to Sunday with taijutsu alone.

Part of being an assassin had been for Shin to know his targets _very_ well. Despite his nickname of the "Reaper of Death" (given to him by teammates, half in jest), in the end he hadn't been able to take the self-loathing and pain that came from knowing that he was destroying families and creating orphans. So he had requested a transfer to guard duty in Takigakure, where the couple (and their young daughter) had been living at the time.

Once the war had ended, they moved to Se-shi, where they purchased the Inn. Seikyo had helped out for a few years, but ended up leaving to go to school in Ame. Since then, the Inn had slowly lost its client base, as Se-shi had grown and newer hotels and inns had been built closer to the entrance. There were still a few people that stayed with them whenever they passed through the town, but for the most part the Inn was now empty most of the year.

Tayuya had quickly come to the conclusion that coming across a couple like this, that went out of their way to help someone _they didn't even know_, was one-in-a-billion. Most people, if they had seen her on that first day, would have been either ambivalent to the point of negligence, or even worse, acted kindly and then turned around and betrayed her. She was _extremely_ lucky to have run into them while she was as emotionally compromised as she had been. Less kind people would have taken advantage of that weakness.

It was almost surreal that they had been so accepting of her. She had told them as much, they had just waved it off, saying that most people didn't get such attention from them, but she had truly seemed like she needed it.

And she had. After talking to both of them, and spending time around them, she realized that she _needed_ to have relationships with other people. Meaningful ones. Not just the distanced interpersonal interactions she had had with the rest of the Sound Four. Or the one-sided admiration that she had felt towards Orochimaru. But relationships where she trusted the other person, and actually talked to them about how she was feeling.

After that, Shin and Yomi had easily taken up the roles of slightly crazy uncle and doting aunt her in mind. They offered a point of stability that went miles to help Tayuya deal with her various emotional upsets and revelations easier. Instead of allowing her to internalize her negative feelings, they made her express them, and she was left feeling that much less weighed down because of it.

She made a mental note to try and act less abrasive on first impressions. She hadn't even gotten the chance in Se-shi, as Shin had had her off-balance from the first time he'd spoken to her. Usually though, first meetings went something like:

"My name's Tayuya. I don't like being forced to work with someone else. So try and stay the fuck out of my way."

She grimaced. Yeah, that was definitely _not_ a good way to start a meaningful relationship. It had worked great when she was keeping people at arms length, as most people usually outright avoided her after that. But emotional connections? Not so much. She made a face. This was going to be so _troublesome_. (Somewhere in Konoha, a boy with pineapple hair sneezed.)

In the end she decided she'd just have to work on it, and in the meantime try and be sincere. It was the best she could do, as her rusty people skills didn't really give her much else to work with.

* * *

><p>Shin's friend Yoshida was like white rice. Plain. Dull. Bland. And traditional.<p>

He made masks. During most of the year, he ran his shop by himself. There was plenty of stock, and not much demand. Because of this, he was commissioned by the Takigakure's shinobi corps to design and paint most of their ANBU masks.

It was funny how things worked like that. He was an artist, which one would think would be _more_ prone to eccentricities due to the creative nature of his craft. But Yoshida-san managed to defy logic, and be all the more boring in spite of it.

This time of year, Takigakure was preparing for its annual festival to celebrate the giant tree that grew in the middle of the village. Tayuya didn't really get it. But it gave her a job, and therefore money, so she wasn't complaining too much.

Her primary task was to prepare uncut, gnarly pieces of wood for use by Yoshida. This involved stripping the piece of bark (if it had any), examining it for any major knots that would make cutting it more difficult, removing them if possible, and then cutting it to Yoshida's specifications. This resulted in what he called a 'blank'. Yoshida would then take the blank, carve it into the likeness of something, and then paint it. He did series, so there were a bunch of fox masks, for example. At the end of the day, once they were dry, she had to pack them into a box (carefully!) in preparation for selling them at festival, while Yoshida came up with the design for the next day.

His masks were _very_ popular from what he'd told her. And from the amount they were making, she believed him. Because he didn't have half as many stocked in the store as they had made already.

It was hard, sweaty, dirty work. And she liked it. She could have done worse with a job. At least she wasn't stuck arranging flowers or making tea in a shop. This suited her much better.

Yoshida lived in a small house on the west side of the village. It had a craft workshop attached to it, which is where they worked. He also had a small flat above the storefront, and she was allowed to stay in it for a portion of her pay. She was on her own for food, though. So what usually ended up happening was she'd go to a shop down the street, get a cup of tea and some breakfast-thing (often a pastry), and then go to the store at the corner and pick up a bento for lunch. She had tried eating dinner with Yoshida the first few nights (at restaurants), but there was a constant awkward silence in the air that kept her on edge. She quickly abandoned that plan. He was a consummate professional, but even worse than her at personal interaction.

Instead, she started experimenting with the dishes she had learned from Yomi. Tayuya had asked her for a few recipes in a letter she had sent, and the woman had been delighted to send her a few easy things. She still wasn't much further past fish and rice, but she was trying. Eating her own food really pushed her to improve.

Last Friday (she'd only been there a week), she'd taken a shower and then gone out to eat at a nearby grill with her first week's pay in hand. It was surprisingly satisfying knowing that she had _worked_ for this meal. While she knew in her mind that there was really nothing different about the food itself, it was the feeling of accomplishment that she allowed herself to enjoy.

On her days off (the weekend), she'd split her time up between daily morning exercises, learning from Shin's scrolls, and researching the new seal on her chest. While the first two had been rewarding (she had been waking _very_ early in order to get her morning katas in before work), the last had yielded nothing. Zilch.

She'd gone to the library and asked about information on sealing, but without proper shinobi identification, the best she could do was learning about the history and legends of sealing. No theory, no examples. The librarian had been very apologetic, but there was nothing to be done about it. It was humbling living as a civilian.

Up until now, the biggest effect it had had on Tayuya's lifestyle was how she got from point A to point B, walking through roads instead of roof-hopping. But the library was the first place she had been really limited because she _wasn't_ a ninja. Not that it was unexpected, just... unnerving. Tayuya also had her doubts that there would be anything in the shinobi section. The seal was almost too... sterile.

One of the few things she _had_ read was that every seal contained a signature, like the author's personal claim to the design of the seal. The one on her chest, in comparison, was simply an endless stream of teensy characters, as if it had been written by an apprentice who didn't have a signature. Except it was far too _perfect_. Every character looked like it had been stamped flawlessly. She'd discovered that when she had used a magnifying glass and a mirror to examine it the night before. Either way, the library was a dead end.

She was back to square one.

* * *

><p>It was Sunday evening now, and she was walking back to the flat to prepare herself another meal. She'd picked up a tub of miso paste, some kombu, and kezurikatsuo, and she was going to try following Yomi's recipe for miso soup. It looked really good on paper, and she was rather excited to try making something other than fish. But what else to make? She was pulled out her hunger-induced dilemma by a woman yelling at the top of her lungs.<p>

The woman brandished a broom, swinging it wildly, and was using it (to surprisingly great effect) to push a girl with green hair (_green_ hair, really?) out of the front of what Tayuya assumed was the woman's shop based on her actions.

"I DON'T **CARE** IF YOU'RE A NINJA, YOU AND YOUR KIND ARE FAR MORE TROUBLE THAN YOU'RE WORTH. NOW STAY OUT OF MY SHOP!" So it was her store. The girl fell backwards, trying to avoid being swatted with the broom, and landed painfully on her rear. The woman in the door, satisfied with her rant, turned around and went back muttering something that sounded suspiciously like 'monster'.

Tayuya looked on, curious. What had the girl done to justify such harsh treatment?

Everyone else on the street seemed to be avoiding looking in the girl's direction, even the ones walking right in front of her, as if this was an everyday occurrence. Tayuya frowned. Well, there wasn't much _she_ could do. The girl got to her feet, dusted herself off, and jumped to the top of the nearest roof (it was one she had just been evicted from). Tayuya watched the girl leap away, and thought she smelled something fishy going on.

But maybe that was just the kezurikatsuo.

* * *

><p>Tayuya saw the strange green-haired girl three times over the next two days.<p>

The first time was only in passing, the girl leaping across a roof that Tayuya only coincidentally happened to be looking at, and had it been anyone else, she almost would have doubted her eyes it occurred so quickly. But there was no denying that green hair and dark skin. It immediately brought back the memory of the day before, and Tayuya arrived at work a bit more melancholic and pensive that usual. Yoshida only remarked on it when she didn't greet him like normal, and she pushed her thoughts of the strange girl aside to give her full focus to the task at hand. Being distracted while working heavy machinery was not safe.

The second time was on her way home from work. She had just gone to the market to get some more eggs, and was walking in the alley behind the store as a shortcut to get back to her flat. The girl was talking to a man who stood in what the back door to the store Tayuya had just come from. She couldn't get a good look at his face, but he didn't seem to have any bad intentions. He clapped the girl on the shoulder, and handed her a paper bag that was completely full. The man then backed into the store, closing the door.

What the hell was going on? The girl was thrown out of a store mid-day in full public view and nobody helped her, but in the alley behind a supermarket she was handed a bag that looked like it could feed someone for a few weeks. It didn't make any sense.

From what Tayuya had just witnessed, she concluded that for some reason (something she'd done? continued to do?), the girl was considered a nuisance at best publicly, but a few people still supported her. It pointed to her gaining that reputation by doing, or allegedly doing, something that the public considered deplorable, but was quietly thankful for.

It also was possible that she had been framed, or taken the fall for a higher ranking officer's mistake, like her jounin-sensei, and that while the villagers only knew of the public story, there were people who admired or appreciated her behind the scenes. Tayuya had heard of situations like that happening every so often in the hidden villages, Kumo in particular. But usually the public backlash faded fairly quickly, as the younger ninja was able to gain back the trust of the village by doing more public missions.

As the girl turned around, Tayuya's eyes met hers for just a moment. Tayuya was struck dumb. They were _orange_. Who the heck had orange eyes? Well, clearly this girl did. Didn't they tell her orange wasn't a normal color? Blanching, she realized that based on the treatment she had seen, people probably _had_ told her that. And not in a nice way.

The green-haired, orange-eyed girl quickly turned and leapt to the adjacent roof, making no sound, simply disappearing into the twilight.

Maybe it was the result of some sort of experimentation? Tayuya didn't think that the orange eyes were natural. They had almost glowed. It would explain why people didn't like her, and that some would take pity on her. She shook her head to stop her imagination from running wild. Wild conjecture was great, but it didn't help her understand what was really going on. She continued walking home, her thoughts inadvertently drifting to mixtures of green and orange.

The third time Tayuya saw her was also in an alley. Unfortunately, it was under worse circumstances. It had been a very late day at work, and she only managed to leave around 9, as the last masks had taken forever to dry, even with Yoshida's fancy dehydration/heater box that they used to speed up the process. She was walking across town, from Yoshida's home to her flat. As she passed an alley, she heard slurred ramblings from it, and ignored them just on principle. Until she caught a flash of green from the corner of her eye. Thoughts of the green-haired girl came back. And that shade was very distinctive. Curiosity piqued, she stepped into the mouth of the alley to get a better look.

The alley was formed from three two-story buildings, one on either side, and one at the end. The girl stood with her back to the rear wall, and two seemingly drunk men stood in front of her. They seemed to be slurring something at her, but the girl's eyes were vacant and she seemed to not be listening. Why didn't she just jump to one of the roofs? It was only a two story jump, and she could use an opposing wall to help her ascend _easily_. So why did she just stand there?

One of the drunks started to get fairly agitated, and began swinging his fist around, almost hitting the girl a couple times. And then one of the swings landed. The girl didn't move an inch. She didn't protect herself, or try to escape. She just stood there, the light in her eyes gone.

Tayuya couldn't stand to watch it anymore. Normally she was all for a hands-off approach to dealing with people, especially other people's conflicts, and before she had stayed Shin and Yomi she would have just ignored the girl and kept walking. But she had made a promise to them to at least _try_ and reach out to other people. And this girl definitely seemed to need someone's help. The fact that Tayuya was curious about her situation just made the decision that much easier.

Striding to the end of the alley, she grabbed one of the girl's hands. She could just barely make out what the agitated man was saying. Something about bugs and squashing and possession. He was clearly beyond inebriated. Not able to endure it any longer, Tayuya hit a pressure point in the back of his neck a bit harder than necessary and was satisfied when he fell to the ground bonelessly. She repeated the action with his companion.

"C'mon. Let's get out of here." she said to the girl. But the her face didn't register any indication that she'd heard.

Tayuya pulled her toward the entrance to the alley, and the girl stumbled a couple times before her eyes began to brighten and her steps started matching up properly.

"What are you doing?" The girl seemed truly confused and a tad anxious.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm getting you out of there. Why were you letting them do that?"

"Do what?"

Tayuya almost stopped walking. What? Had she even been aware of what had been going on at all? Was it some sort of sensory deprivation?

"Let them insult you. Hurt you." A glimmer of recognition passed fleetingly through the girl's eyes, but Tayuya caught it. So she _did_ know what was happening. "Why didn't you just leave?"

The girl was silent for a few moments. "It doesn't matter. It wouldn't do anything." she whispered.

Tayuya was getting frustrated. How could this girl be so _submissive_? In her defense, it was truly a foreign concept to her. She would never have gone down without a fight.

The girl's voice suddenly gained an edge. "And why does it matter to _you_, anyways? Why do you care what I do?" She pulled her hand from Tayuya's grip, and Tayuya noticed that she had dragged the girl two blocks without even realizing it.

"It's not like there's anything you can do about it. And you've probably made things worse! If they realize that someone attacked them, they could pin it on me! Why couldn't you just stay away!?" At that, she jumped up onto the single story building next to them and bounded away.

Tayuya was left standing in the street, speechless. And then she got angry. She was almost tempted to try and follow the girl to knock some sense into her. Almost. But she wouldn't be goaded into another fight based on just emotion. That was a quick way to get herself captured or killed. Instead, she simmered as she continued going home. She had gone out of her way to try and help her, and all she got in return was resentment. It was so frustrating. Well, if the girl wasn't going to share anything, she'd just have to get her information the other way. Gossip.

Tayuya stopped in the middle of the street and let loose a string of profanities. She hadn't even gotten the damn girl's name.

* * *

><p>The next day, she started snooping around. When she went to pay for her morning meal, she asked the cashier about "that green haired girl". He had pretended not to know who she was talking about, but when she mentioned the orange eyes, the man's face had immediately scrunched up, his lips forming a pencil thin line. It was all he could do to tell her that she shouldn't associate with the girl.<p>

So that was a dead end.

She tried again at the place she usually bought her bento. The woman behind the counter was much more vocal, but she devolved into a rant on "monster bugs that were going to eat her children". While it was mostly fruitless, she noticed that both the woman and the drunk man had mentioned insects. So maybe there was something there?

She went to work after that, and put her theories on the back burner.

When it was time for lunch, she ate her bento in record time, and then rushed off. She'd decided to try the market guy next. Unfortunately, it had been rather dark in the alley when she had been there before, the sun too low to light it very much.

She wandered around the alley, hoping to get lucky and catch whoever had come through the door before her lunch break was over. She was just about to call this attempt a wash, when the heavy back entrance opened. A young man, maybe 25?, walked out of the door with a large stack of boxes in his hands. He moved over and threw them in the large garbage bin without noticing her. He looked to be fairly average in most ways. She moved from her leaning position up against the building wall, and he started at the sound.

"You almost gave me a heart attack." He held a hand to his chest.

"Eheh. Sorry. Are you the only one that comes out of that door?" She asked.

He looked confused at the question. "Yeah, for the most part. Why?"

"Do you know anything about a girl with bright green hair?"

He started fidgeting nervously, shifting his weight from side to side. His eyes roved around, looking anywhere but her face. "Nah, don't know anyone like that."

His entire body betrayed him. He was an absolutely terrible liar.

She decided to give him bit of a scare in return for his blatant attempt to fool her. "Because, I saw someone giving her food here." At that, his face became panicked. His eyes widened and she know she'd gotten him. "So if it wasn't you who was it?"

He seemed to go through some massive internal debate. His entire face betrayed his emotions. Was this what all civilians were like? No skills in keeping secrets or deception? He had seemed to come to a conclusion based on his expression. His shoulders sagged and he deflated. "Look, please don't tell anyone. She doesn't deserve half the stuff she goes through." His tone was almost begging, and she decided at this point, it would just be cruel to say no.

"I won't tell anyone, I just want to know more." Really, she wasn't out to hurt the girl or anything. What did he think she'd do? Hunt her down or something?

"I-It's not my place to talk about other people." Oh, great. He was one of _those_ types. Her one strong lead so far, and he was too principled to talk about people behind their back. This was frustrating. "Can you please just let it be? She's not hurting anyone."

Ugh. He looked like a kicked puppy now. That was the end of that then. Not much more she could do. Any more pressure and he'd probably just walk away. And she had to get back to work anyways. The only way to get him off her case was to agree in someway.

She decided that a lie of omission would be safe here. "Alright, I won't bother her." There. Now he could leave happy, and since she had no intention of confronting the girl herself, she wasn't _really_ lying. She just hadn't said that she would stop poking around.

The man nodded. "Thanks. I have to get back to work." And with that, he went back inside, closing the door behind him.

Tayuya walked away in thought. So apparently there were people who were secretly alright with the girl. The problem would be finding more, and getting more information from them. If they all ended up being as uninformative as this guy had been, it would be a while until she was satisfied.

* * *

><p>Tayuya exited the worshop sweaty, and covered in sawdust. The planer had needed to be cleaned, and she ended up getting her hands covered grease that was a pain to wash away even with soap. She was so focused one getting it off the spot between her index finger and thumb that she didn't even notice the figure standing against the wall around the corner.<p>

She nearly screamed, but contained her panic at being caught off guard. She really should have been more aware. Ninja needed to watch their back at all times. The figure resolved itself into an hourglass, and then the green-haired girl was standing in front of her.

"Uh. Hi? Can I help you?" Tayuya was more than a little unnerved by her appearance.

"You've been asking around about me." The girl's voice contained an edge of frozen steel to it. "Why?"

Well, shit. That just backfired magnificently. And it hadn't even been a whole day. She must have a hell of an information network. Or someone who looked out for her. Tayuya felt like hitting her face against something. The guy from the market must have told her somehow. Subtlety had never been one of her strong points, and it was coming back to bite her now.

One simple question. And it was the biggest one. One that Tayuya didn't even know the answer to herself. The girl was a mystery, and Tayuya only knew that she felt like she needed to know more.

The girl repeated herself, a little harder. "Why?" The weight that the girl's voice carried implied pain if she didn't give the correct answer. Tayuya almost scoffed at that, until she felt the air getting heavy with chakra. It rolled over her, and carried a metallic tang to it that made her flight or fight response just shut down. It was even worse than being around Orochimaru. The pressure was unbearable. She needed to respond quickly.

"I don't know." The girl's orange eyes bored into her, as if she was able to know if you were telling the truth just by looking at you. A trail of sweat from both the sun and nervousness ran down Tayuya's forehead and fell off her nose. She tried not to blink. It was like being pierced by the gaze of someone who _knew_ they could turn you into mush in an instant. Unlike Shin, who had been merely content to just sit calmly and observe the situation, only jumping in if necessary, this girl was very clearly the aggressor. She looked younger than Tayuya, but the sheer amount of killing intent she exuded pinned Tayuya in place, nearly causing her to gag.

And then it was gone.

The girl nodded, seemingly satisfied. "You're nervous. But you're not lying." And then she brightened, as if she hadn't just intimidated Tayuya into answering her.

What the hell had just happened? Was the girl bipolar or something? Now that she had a chance to catch her breath, Tayuya's mind started working in overdrive. She had felt like a fresh genin! What the fuck had the girl gone through that allowed her to force that kind of intent on other people? Her mind jumped to the more immediate questions, realizing this was her chance to get them answered. It seemed her curiosity was still flaming, even _after_ that experience.

"How did you know that? How did you even know where I was?" That was the real question Tayuya had. How had the girl found _her_ out of the entire village at such short notice?

The girl held a finger out, and something flew out of Tayuya's hair and onto it. Tayuya looked at the outstretched digit. A single beetle crawled over the finger. The girl looked at the beetle, following it with her eyes. So she _did_ have something to do with insects. Maybe she would clear up that mystery.

"Female beetle. The Aburame use a special breed, but I can use any." She looked up at Tayuya, her eyes piercing her again, noticing her confusion. "They're a clan in Konoha that use insects for things like tracking. The answer to both of your questions is pheromones. I can smell them. It's a... special ability that I have." So she had some kind of enhanced sense of smell. And she was knowledgable about insects. That helped, but it still didn't explain how everyone in the village mentioned bugs when she was brought up.

She pulled her attention back to the girl in front of her. Was this really the same person as yesterday? Her eyes were so _alive_. "Humans produce them too. When they're nervous, or upset, or happy, or aroused." Tayuya flushed at that.

"That's how I knew." She tapped the side of her nose conspiratorially. "After all, the nose knows." She giggled at the joke, and Tayuya marveled at the sound. It was like glass tinkling and falling, mixed with the easy laziness of a shallow brook. It was absolutely beautiful. She wanted to hear it again.

"How did you know I was asking about you?" At this point, she just wanted to confirm her suspicion.

"Sado. From the market." Yup, confirmed. "All he said was a girl with vibrant red hair had been asking about me, but I knew it was you." Tayuya grimaced at having been caught so easily. Clearly her information gathering and subtlety needed some work.

"Alright. Just, please don't put a beetle in my hair again." Tayuya shuddered. "No offense or anything."

The girl stared at her for a moment, and then started laughing uncontrollably. Unlike before, this was full and hearty, and yet it still sounded just as amazing. The girl leaned up against the wall, clutching her stomach. Tears started leaking from the corner of her eyes.

This girl was _weird_.

"H-Hey. You alright?"

She seemed to be having trouble breathing, but waved Tayuya off. Taking deep breaths, she slowly composed herself, bursting into suppressed giggles every few seconds.

Tayuya frowned. "Whatever I did, it wasn't _that_ funny. "

The girl drew herself up to her full height. She was still giggling every so often.

"Sorry, sorry. It's just. You should have seen yourself. You're absolutely covered in sawdust and grease from head to toe, and you shudder at a thought of the _beetle_? " she started giggling again.

The girl's laugh was infectious, and Tayuya soon found herself giggling too. It was pretty silly in hindsight.

Once they had pulled themselves together, she looked at Tayuya. "I like you. Sorry about yesterday."

Tayuya was speechless. "Uh, sure." There went her righteous indignation and annoyance with the girl. Right out the window. "You're alright yourself." _When you aren't acting bipolar._

"Well, I guess I should get going, now that I know you're not trying to do anything bad. Ninja stuff and all." The girl turned around and started walking away, getting ready to jump onto a low roof.

"W-Wait!" The girl stopped and turned around. "Do, do you want to come over some time? Maybe for dinner or something?" Maybe she could get to know her better, pierce some of the mystery surrounding her.

For a second, a haunted expression flickered past the girl's face, and Tayuya almost missed it. Her eyes had dimmed slightly. Tayuya's chest suddenly felt like it was twisting. Then the cheerful girl was back.

She smiled widely, her eyes squinting, and nodded. "Do you know where?" At that the girl giggled, and just tapped the side of her nose.

"Oh. Right." Tayuya said dumbly. Tracking ninja.

Then the girl was gone in a flash of green.

"Wait! Is Friday okay?" There was no response, except for a tinkling laugh echoing on the breeze. But Tayuya knew she had heard, and accepted that as an affirmative.

She was feeling strange. The girl had been astoundingly different from yesterday. She just appeared, and in the few minutes Tayuya had talked to her, she had started being reminded of how she felt around Shin and Yomi near the end of her stay. And then just as rapidly as she had entered, the girl had left, leaving Tayuya feeling forlorn. Adrift.

She seemed slightly unstable, but as long as it wasn't directed at _her_, Tayuya thought she could probably handle it.

Slapping her cheeks, she stopped herself from thinking about it. She had something else to focus on now. She was going to have someone over for dinner. She needed to work on her cooking.

Tayuya growled suddenly as she realized she _still_ hadn't gotten the girl's name.

* * *

><p>The rest of the week went smoothly. She saw the green-haired girl twice more, bounding across roofs. But each time she looked away, she heard the smooth tinkling laughter on the wind, and knew the girl had somehow known she was watching. Her rabid curiosity had waned, temporarily satisfied with the fact that she would have the chance to get to know her better first-hand.<p>

To be honest, she was more than a little overwhelmed. The girl on Tuesday and the girl on Wednesday seemed almost like two completely different people, ignoring the seemingly minor event she had been threatening . If she hadn't apologized, Tayuya probably could have been convinced that the two different days had been two separate twins. The only other thing that gave her away was the sudden, brief haunting vacancy that shadowed her orange eyes. It was almost instantaneous, but Tayuya had caught it twice now. And she would be lying if she said she wasn't slightly worried. She didn't want to drive off a potential new...what? Acquaintance? Friend? Companion?

She didn't really know how she thought of the girl. Right now it was more interest in why the village treated her the way they did. But what happened when she found out? Would she just lose interest in her? Or would she become so emotionally invested that she couldn't help but care? She had a foreboding sense that she had just sealed her own fate. Great.

* * *

><p>It was Friday afternoon, and Tayuya was bored out of her mind. Yoshida had let her go early because of all the overtime she had done, so she had just headed home, thinking she could get ready for her guest. It had taken all of ten minutes. And now she had nothing to do.<p>

She had decided to wait until the green-haired girl was here to finish preparing the food, so that it would be as fresh as possible. She was going to try a new fish dish (salmon) that Yomi had given her the recipe for. She'd also gotten a new fillet knife at Yomi's suggestion, since none of the knives she had were long or flexible enough to handle the skin easily. She was going to do a side of steamed vegetables, and hoped that the girl liked them. Of course, she had rice in the rice cooker, ready to go as soon as she needed, and she'd start that before she started the fish to give it enough time.

Tayuya draped herself over the cool tabletop. What was she going to talk about? She obviously had to try and steer clear of any topics that made the girl bring that haunted look back. So far it had seemed random, and she had no idea what triggered it. She'd just have to cross her fingers and hope that she didn't make a _complete_ ass of herself.

Any topics of ninja duty were similarly off the table, as they were probably classified, and if she appeared too knowledgeable about shinobi duty, it would draw the curiosity and attention to _how_ she knew. And she really didn't want that.

Insects seemed like a safe bet, but Tayuya knew next to nothing about them, and they gave her the heebie-jeebies. It wasn't that she was squemish or scared, but she'd had a couple bad experiences with insects in her childhood, and they carried forward. Her thoughts drifted to the upcoming days she had off.

She flipped her head over so the other cheek was on the table. Last weekend she hadn't had any time to search for a flute to replace her old one. She had been too focused on the seal, and then the green-haired girl had started popping up everywhere. So that was what she was going to do tomorrow. Find a decent music shop, and see what they had in stock. Her fingers were starting to itch, and she needed to play in order to relieve the tension. It was also incredibly cathartic to play, and usually mellowed her for a couple hours. Maybe if she had had her flute following the battle... She pushed that thought away. There wasn't any point to entertaining 'what if's. Everything had turned out for the best anyways. Shin and Yomi had been one of the best things to happen to her in years.

* * *

><p>She had been reading through one of Shin's scrolls in her room when she heard the sharp knocks on the door. Jumping to her feet, she quickly straightened her clothes and tried to make sure her hair was lying as flat as it could. Without a hat it tended to stick out at odd angles on the top when she wasn't paying attention.<p>

Crossing to the sitting room to the entrance hall, she yelled "Coming!". Who was she kidding, the girl had probably heard her jumping up.

Opening the door, she was once again struck by the odd combination of green hair and orange eyes. But now that she wasn't caught off guard by any more odd colored features (or being intimidated into cardiac arrest), she could look at girl's appearance more generally.

Her skin was a rich creamy color that looked like she had a grandparent or parent from Mountain Country. She wore skintight mesh body armor on her top cut like a short shirt that reached her elbows, and Tayuya recognised the silvery-black sheen as a combination of nylon, cotton, and carbon thread. It could stop kunai at point blank, and only extremely sharp blades or a rapier could actually harm or pierce it. It was also insanely expensive.

Orochimaru had looked into the fabric, and determined that it was too expensive to be used on a mass scale and that the Sound Four didn't need it. _Yeah, right._ It appeared as if she had a pair of shorts that reached her knees made out the the same materials well. Either she was paid ridiculously well, or someone had invested a lot of money into making sure the girl wasn't easily harmed on duty.

Covering that layer was a simple white sleeveless top that reached to just below her rib cage, the body armor ending about a half an inch above her belly button, and a white skirt with slit sides that started along with the armor about two inches below. The only thing that was on her arms was her hita-ite on her right.

She was fairly tall for what Tayuya was guessing her age (mid-teens). Taller than Tayuya at least. She would be beautiful in a few years, but right now her body was still at that awkward lanky stage. Despite that, her muscles were tight and well defined, and flowed like steel wire and mercury under her visible skin. She might not be large, like Jirobu had been, but Tayuya was willing to bet her punches would hurt just as much, if not more.

She must train a _lot_ to get muscle definition like that. Maybe she'd be up for sparring? Some civilians did martial arts for exercise, so it wasn't _too_ far out there, right? She could just deflect possible queries of ninja training as solely a physical past-time that she had been practicing for years. And Tayuya was dying for a good sparring partner. Shadow fighting and katas were only so rewarding.

"Hi!" The girl's smile was going full-watt. Tayuya thought she might be blinded for a second.

"Hey." She opened the door to let her in, and closed it once she was all the way into the hall.

Tayuya stood at the end of the entrance hall while the girl took her purple sandals off at the genkan. She noted that the girl's eyes seemed to be roving everywhere, never settling on one spot, trying to absorb everything she saw.

"It's really nothing amazing, but it works. And it's cheap." She opened the door that lead into the kitchenette / dining area. "It's just a simple 2DK ." The second bedroom was empty, but furnished for another assistant. Yoshida had done a surprisingly tasteful job decorating, but later she had learned he'd gotten everything as a set from a mail-order place.

"Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I _was_ going to start prepping the food before you got here, but I sorta fell asleep." Tayuya rubbed her head sheepishly.

The green-haired girl giggled at that.

"Okay." still giggling, she plopped herself down cross-legged on one of the cushions surounding the square table in the center of the room.

"So, I've never really done salmon, but I wanted to try it." Tayuya laughed nervously, before moving over to the counter top where she had the cutting board. "Do you eat vegetables?"

"Yep!", the girl nodded. Her eyes were still darting around, landing on one thing, and staying there for only a second before moving to something new.

Tayuya plugged the rice cooker in before she started on the other dishes. Getting the fish out of the fridge, she unwrapped it, and placed it down on the wooden board before throwing the paper wrapper out.

Rereading Yomi's instructions, she made sure she knew what she had to do. She'd never skinned a fish before, as she usually got already filleted meat prepackaged from the store, but today she had gone to the market and got it fresh. This might be a bit tricky.

Holding her shiny new knife, she began working on it. Pulling a little bit of the skin back , she ran the knife just below it, slowly removing it whole from right to left. She got about half-way before she missed a piece. Trying to remove the skin that she had already collected, she pulled the knife up, and hit an area that was resisting. The knife jerked, and then jumped upwards.

Right into the palm of the hand that had been holding the fish down.

"Kami fucking damn it." It wasn't a deep cut, but it was long, and blood was flowing out of it at a decent pace. Damn. She might have hit something.

The girl's eyes zeroed in on her. "What's wrong?" Tayuya cupped her hand to stop the blood from dripping, and quickly moved it over to the sink, still cursing under her breath. She didn't want to contaminate the food.

"Don't worry about it. It's just a little cut." she said to the girl.

She got up at that and moved over to stand next to her over the sink. "That... does not look like a little cut. Are you sure you're alright?" she asked haltingly.

Tayuya was getting a bit lightheaded at the loss of blood. But she also didn't want the girl to worry.

"I'll be fine. I just need to get something to wrap it." she replied, trying to assuage the girl. This was _not_ how she had envisioned this dinner going. Hopefully she wouldn't need to go to the hospital and get stitches. With her luck, it was bad enough that she would.

She rinsed the blood off and was annoyed to see how quickly it returned. Yeah, she'd be going to the ER for stitches. The small number of medical supplies in the bathroom probably had butterfly closures that would work temporarily.

Still holding her left hand palm up to avoid getting any blood on the floor, she rooted around below the sink for a towel or something to wrap her hand with. Something to soak up the bleeding and apply pressure would be useful.

The girl next to her let out a sharp gasp, and Tayuya knocked her head inside the cabinet. "Shit!"

Tayuya pulled her head out and stood up. "What? Did it get worse?" she asked anxiously.

The girl's eyes were wide and her jaw had gone slack. Following her line of sight, Tayuya looked back at her hand.

The hand that had blood sucking into the incision. The hand that had a disappearing cut. The hand that was perfectly healed.

Tayuya thought she summed up the situation nicely.

"Well, fuck."

* * *

><p>The remainder of preparing dinner went much smoother. After making sure that Tayuya had actually healed, and saying that she <em>seemed<em> to be alright, the green-haired girl had gone back to sit at the table. Unlike before, she was very quiet and her eyes were unmoving. Tayuya was worried she had (accidentally) triggered one of the girl's mood swings. She sighed inaudibly. This was exactly what she had been trying to avoid.

Placing the finished dinner down on the table seemed to be enough to draw the girl back to reality. Tayuya sat down, and served herself some of meat and vegetables, and the other girl did the same.

Taking a few bites, she tasted it. It was pretty good. Especially for a first try. An awkward silence permeated the room.

Where to start a conversation...

Oh. Right. "So, uh. What's your name?" Tayuya hoped that wasn't rude. And she kind of needed to know. She couldn't just keep referring to her as "that weird green-haired girl".

The girl looked at her like she had grown a second head. And then started laughing. And didn't stop.

Tayuya was confused. What had she done now? She was extremely pleased to hear her laughing, as it meant she wasn't going to go all sour and moody like she'd feared (and she secretly enjoyed the sound), but she had no clue what had prompted it this time. The girl slapped the table, and struggled to catch a breath.

"Al-All this time, and you didn't even know my name? Didn't Sado tell you?" Tayuya shook her head wordlessly.

"And nobody else told you either?" She shook her head again, feeling slightly embarrassed at her ignorance. "Oh man, I have got to tell him about this. He thought you had already found a bunch of dirt on me, and was just going to blackmail him. It was almost pitiful when he told me." She took a moment to catch a breath and calm down, wiping a tear from the edge of her left eye.

"My name's Fu. And I'm number seven." She went back to eating, rotating between rice, fish, and vegetables.

Number seven?

"Tayuya." Tayuya took another piece of fish with her chopsticks and put it on some rice, before placing the whole thing in her mouth.

"You aren't number nine?" What was with all the numbers? Was it some kind of code? Like a secret organization or something?

"I have absolutely no freaking idea what the hell you're talking about."

Fu looked like she had swallowed a lemon. And then she started laughing again. "Well, I guess he won that bet. I was totally sure this time, too. Oh well, his streak of luck continues." Fu had bet on her against Sado? Over this number thing? Tayuya's head started to hurt.

"The food's great, by the way" Fu continued. "You really don't need to be nervous. I'm not going to bite your head of or anything. Well, I'll try not to, anyways."

"H-How did you-" The girl tapped the side of her nose. Right. Super smell that gave away your real emotions. That was definitely going to take some getting used to.

They lapsed into a silence that was far more comfortable than the one when they had started eating.

"So uh how old are you?" Tayuya asked. This was small talk, right?

"I'm fifteen." That seemed about right, and matched with what she had mentally guessed.

"You live here with your parents?"

Fu's eyes glazed over for a second. "No. I'm by myself, over in the eastern section." Okay. Steering clear of that topic.

"Well, I'm only seventeen." Tayuya countered, trying to deflect the topic back onto stabler ground. "Have you been a ninja for long?"

"Yeah", she whispered. Her eyes visibly dimmed this time. Shit. Two strikes.

And then light in her eyes was back. Like nothing had happened. She focused on Tayuya, and smiled a toothy grin. Like she knew something Tayuya didn't, and was getting back at her.

"You're a ninja too. Or used to be." Tayuya almost groaned. Not again. She didn't want to leave town yet. She restrained her gut reaction of attacking the other girl. There was no chance. Based on what she'd seen, she'd be crushed immediately.

"Don't worry, your secret's safe with me." the green-haired girl whispered conspiritorily. What? Again?

What the hell was up with people and accepting strange ninjas into their homes? What the fuck was the world coming too? Trying to keep calm, she remembered there wasn't much point in trying to conceal her emotions. Fu had already demonstrated the ability to get around that. Tayuya sighed.

"I'm technically not a ninja anymore." she said. Maybe that would get her some breathing room.

"Anymore?" Tayuya nodded, but refused to say anything else. She was just getting to know Fu, and didn't want to get into that whole mess with her right now.

"But how could you tell that? Don't tell me it's your nose again." Fu laughed.

"Nope, you're wayyyy too quiet. You don't sound like a civilian when you move around. And you're too fluid and conservative in your motions." She pointed at the stove. "Like when you were cooking."

Shit, was it really that obvious? She'd have to work on that. Tayuya was surprised that she had been paying attention, she'd thought the girl had been completely dead to the world.

Fu asked the next question. "So where are you from? "

Tayuya decided to twist that to her favor. She'd avoid giving out as much compromising information as she could. Fu _said_ she wasn't going to out her, but she didn't know what she was going to do with the information. Blackmail would be a very effective tactic right now. And as much as she wanted to believe in good faith that Fu wouldn't do that, she was probably better safe than sorry for now.

"Originally? No idea." She had no memories of the first seven years of her life, so that was technically true.

"No, as a ninja." Tayuya cursed under breath, and Fu must have heard it because she giggled.

Kami-damned perceptive smart girls. Urgh. There wasn't an easy way to escape now. And she got the impression Fu wasn't going to let her not answer this one.

"Sound." Fu made a face. "I'm not with them anymore! I said that!" Tayuya defended.

"Well, at least you wised up." Not a very nice way to put it, but true. She _had_ wised up. It had taken the curse seal being eliminated _'and my flute being chopped into bits'_, but after that she had _definitely_ seen Orochimaru for what he was.

"Yeah" Tayuya agreed. There wasn't much more she could say to something like that.

Tayuya glanced at the clock, when had it gotten to be 8:30? Where had the time gone?

Fu followed her gaze, and saw the time.

"Well, uh, it's getting pretty late, I should probably get going." Fu stood up. "It was a really good dinner, thanks."

"No, thanks for coming over. You're kinda the first person other than my employer I've really hung out with in town." Fu seemed genuinely surprised and happy at that. _Maybe she just needed some more company?_

And unlike her dinner with Yoshida, this had been nice. It was the most she'd talked to someone since she'd left Se-shi.

"We should do this again sometime." Tayuya offered.

"Alright. Let's wait until after next week, and see how busy things are." Right. The festival was next week. Tayuya was a bit disappointed she wouldn't get a chance to see her again sooner, and was a bit suprised that she felt that strongly about it.

Tayuya walked behind Fu as she went into the genkan and bent down to put on her shoes. When she was done she stood up straight, and turned to Tayuya.

"Well, thanks again." She opened the door, and walked out, closing it behind her.

Wait! Sparring! That was perfect!

Tayuya ran to the door and pulled it open, hoping that she was still there. Oddly enough, Fu was walking down the stairs instead of jumping to a roof like usual.

"Hey!" Tayuya shouted down at her. Fu turned around . "Uh, would you be willing to spar with me sometime?" Fu started smiling, but it made Tayuya's blood go cold for some reason. She soldiered on. "I need to improve my hand-to-hand, and you seem like you'd know what you're doing." Her smile turned bloodthirsty, and Tayuya shivered, it looked wrong on her face.

"Alright then. We start tomorrow. 7am. Meet me in the eastern section. I'll find you." And with that, she shunshined away, leaving only a green streak.

Tayuya had a sinking feeling she had thrown herself to the wolves.

What had she just gotten herself into?

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

I'm following manga canon in this story. That means if it's anime only, it's likely not going to be affecting the story. Maybe. Probably. I reserve the right to have the final decision on what events I include for the sake of plot.

Example: Fu's personality. Never seen her in the anime. She's a zombie in the manga, and as we all know, zombies have the personality depth of a puddle. At least until they start reminiscing in the middle of a battle. (And Madara was surprisingly talkative, but he came back to life, so I don't count him.)

Anyways, Fu's personality is my own creation. Because I haven't seen the anime. Too much time investment. Time that could be spent writing!

No, Tayuya does not have Hyoton. But with her skill in manipulating elemental chakra, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of some rather interesting results if she tries experimenting with her affinities.

This story will contain references to some relatively advanced technology that I feel is appropriate and matches the Naruto universe. If you want more information read the note after the translations.

As always, please review and follow if I've managed to pique your interest.

ensou

* * *

><p><strong>Translations:<strong>  
><em>Kombu<em>: the kelp that you eat in miso soup.  
><em>Kezurikatsuo<em>: shaved katsuoboshi (fermented skipjack tuna). When mixed with water and kombu, it forms dashi, which is the stock that miso soup is made from. It tastes weird without water. Trust me.

* * *

><p><strong>On technology in this story:<strong>  
>Some may view the technology references I have in here as a bit high-tech for the Elemental Countries. But think about this: Kishimoto has explicitly stated "Guns aren't suited to ninja... I try to restrain technology that can be used for war." That means no tanks, no fighter planes, no battleships, <em>no atomic bomb<em>. If war is the largest motivation for innovation (and it is, just look at history), and there are no anti-area, or anti-city weapons, _where did that innovation go_? I see it as probably moving in three directions: jutsu, weapons, and armor.

Jutsu can only be created by ninja, for ninja, but ninja are notoriously squirrely about their techniques (which earned the Uchiha a level of distrust and fear). Thus progress with refining techniques is slow (e.g. Hiraishin) and overall, sharing doesn't happen. Instead we get larger, more effective results by adding more power (Sage chakra, anyone?). So jutsu development isn't really benefiting humanity as a whole.

Public innovation _can_ occur in weapons and armor though. You don't need chakra to forge a normal blade. And after a battle, someone picking up a blade or piece of armor could potentially analyze it and learn how it was made, contributing to the dissemination of knowledge, _even if unintended_. Better materials have huge military applications in these areas, pointing to the likelyhood that a at least some local or national military funding goes towards things like materials research.

Based on how warfare is conducted and the given portrayal of the world, it is _completely_ within the realm of possibility that things like kevlar and carbon nanotube thread exist, but are limited in quantity due to production cost.

20


	4. A Stranger Girl

**Disclaimer: **

Did Naruto turn out as a fairly well-adjusted teenager who could make friends at the drop of a hat despite years of neglect and sabotage? If so, I don't own Naruto, or any of the universe.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 4:<strong>  
><strong>A Stranger Girl<strong>

Fu left Tayuya's flat in a state of mixed emotions. She didn't quite know how she felt about the redhead. On the one hand, it seemed like Tayuya was a pretty nice person (if a bit rough around the edges), but on the other hand, she was afraid this could end up really hurting. And she tried to avoid pain like that on principle.

Their first interaction hadn't been all that pleasant. And it had been her own fault.

Whenever Fu got cornered by people, she usually just retreated to her mindscape and talked to Chomei if he wasn't being grumpy, ignoring most of what was going on outside her mind. It worked well. She didn't get in trouble for attacking civilians as a ninja, and the ones who railed on her would be satisfied and leave her alone for a while. The confrontations rarely got very physical, usually nothing more than a black eye or a couple bruises at worst, the civilians too afraid that if they really started in on her, she might snap and kill them. She liked to think she had better control than that. The injuries healed quickly, Chomei helping out when he felt like it. Nobody seemed to notice that she just stopped paying attention at the beginning of their rant. It wasn't like it was anything she hadn't heard before.

Bug. Worm. Demon. Monster. Insect. Bitch. Bug-slut (she _thought_ that was a dig at the slightly revealing clothes she wore, but wasn't too sure). Each of these, and all combinations there of. The villagers weren't very creative. They usually yelled at her about how she was a demon and a terrible monster. Riiiiight.

She didn't know where half the stories about her had come from. But there were a lot. More seemed to pop up every year, and she secretly got a kick whenever kids told stories about her as if she was some boogey monster. The adults were less creative, but still had everything from her eating unborn children to massacring a border town. That one was actually mildly amusing. She hadn't massacred anything, not even a tiny three-man outpost, much less a whole border town. She supposed that she technically _could_ (Chomei's chakra gave her that ability) but there was no reason to, much less any desire for it. It'd just put her in every Hidden Village's bingo book, and other ninja would start coming after her. If she really wanted that kind of attention, it'd much easier jumping up in the middle of a Five Kage Summit and announcing that she was the seven-tail's host. That would _gurantee_ that every village knew about her. The whole reason she was still in Takigakure was because they'd declare her a missing-nin if she left, and then the other villages would find out. As a jinchuriki, she didn't have the option of quitting.

Either way, usually, the villagers didn't do anything worse than sidelining and insulting. But she'd gotten past the insults and cold shoulders and people refusing to sell her things years ago. Sado had actually been the key in that. He'd seen his manager refusing to let her buy her food, and then telling the employees they were forbidden to sell her anything. Once the man had been out of earshot, he told her to come around to the back door. He'd showed up with all the groceries she had been trying to get. Since then, whenever she needed food, she would give Sado a list, and he would take what she needed out of the stock that was _just_ past the sell-by date, since the manager wouldn't notice anything missing, nor would there be any magically appearing money in the till. She got free food (and went through it quickly), and she didn't have to step inside a single store.

After a couple months, she had started talking to Sado about the villagers, just ranting at him most of the time. He was a great listener, and surprisingly insightful. He'd made a few suggestions, and for the most part they'd actually worked. She used to always respond to the taunts of some of the rude people, and he told her to just stop and not give them the satisfaction of knowing they had gotten under her skin. Once she did that, she started noticing that she cared less and less what they actually said. And slowly, the passing insults had waned. Oh, their were still more than a few people who did, but the majority had stopped once they realized that they weren't getting to her anymore.

The drunken confrontations on the other hand, had increased. When the villagers got drunk, they saw that they hadn't told her off in a while, and decided that they needed fix that. Honestly, she considered the drunks easier than the people who confronted her while sober, since the drunks would eventually grow tired and just walk away after about ten minutes, while the sober ones ganged up and fed off each others vitriol. She'd once been caught in an alley with six people. It had taken _three hours_ for them to finally get tired and just go away. That one had been one of the more violent incidents, and she had returned home with a split lip, a black eye, and more than a few bruises.

So when Tayuya had literally pulled her out of her conversation with Chomei, she was already halfway down the alley and hadn't known anything was happening. All she _did_ know was that the drunks had been yelling at her one minute, and the next they were face down on the ground while the redhead dragged her away from the scene. She had immediately jumped to conclusions, and was slightly embarrassed that she hadn't taken the time to find out what had _really_ happened.

She had become a bit anxious at not knowing what was going on, thinking that any potential evidence of a fight on the drunks would lead back to her. And with that, the possibility of being put on probation. So when the Tayuya had started questioning her, she had been more than a little annoyed with her. She ended up taking it out on the girl, when the redhead had only had the best intentions in mind.

She had gone to the shinobi headquarters the next day for a basic D mission as usual, and had expected to walk out with a citation and a probation notice. So when she _hadn't_, she'd gotten confused.

The day had only gotten stranger after that.

* * *

><p><em>Flashback: Wednesday<em>

Fu ended up going back to the alley where she had been accosted by the drunks, and looking for any kind of blood or signs of a scuffle. There was no evidence anything had even happened. And now she was curious. The girl had managed to take down the two _without a fight_. A sleeper hold could do that, but would have alerted the companion, causing a scene, and alerting Fu. But she had taken both down before they had noticed her behind them. Pressure points could easily do that. But most civilians had no idea where they were, much less how to use them in combat. She was now curious not just for herself, but for the potential security of the village. It _was_ her sworn duty, after all. She rolled her eyes. Not that she'd had a choice.

But if there was an undercover foreign ninja lurking around, why would she go out of her way and help the village pariah (who was also a ninja)? That made absolutely no sense. Fu resolved to confront the other girl later. Find out what was really going on. She sniffed around the alley, trying to find a distinct fresh scent that could be the girl's, but everything was muddled together and mixed with the sharp scent of alcohol.

Despite having a _really_ good nose as a side effect of hosting Chomei, the standard human brain was not designed to process hundreds of different scents like that, and it worked against her when she was only trying to pick out one. Once she had a scent, on the other hand, she could easily pick it out of the ones in the area and follow it like a thread. One of the things human brains _could_ do was draw comparisons and find patterns. If there had been two (or more) distinct locations that she knew the girl had been in, she might have had better luck. But this one alley and side street weren't enough.

She instead called for a female beetle from a species with good tracking capabilities. Their brains _were_ wired for this kind of thing. She explained (very simply) that she wanted it to find the female scent from last night in this alley that was not Fu and then follow it to the source. That was beginning to stretch the limit of what she could easily communicate without the beetles getting confused by the complex instructions. But they were exceedingly good at picking up trails that were starting to go cold.

Tagging the beetle's distinctive scent in her mind for later, she continued on and did her daily rank-D mission. It was usually something not involving interacting with the villagers. She'd learned that wasn't a good idea _real_ fast after getting her hita-ite. Today was picking up trash from a small river. Joy.

Fu usually did a C-rank or two a month. They were _always_ short-term assignments. The shinobi leaders got antsy when she was out of the village for too long. She'd even gotten a couple B-ranks under her belt, but those had been ninja that she'd just stumbled across and recognized from the bingo book. The D-ranks and C-ranks were her main source of income though, and she'd managed to hoard quite a lot of cash away.

After she had finished cleaning the river, she ate her lunch in peace on the bank, simply enjoying the sounds around her. Her typical lunch was basic onigiri, but it still filled her up enough that she wouldn't feel hungry until later.

Afterwards, she didn't really have anything to do. She normally went home or did another D rank later in the day. But today she decided to head by the market store where Sado worked and talk to him about the weird girl. Maybe he would have a better idea on how to approach her.

Going by the market (she stayed a couple roofs away), she called a ladybug and asked it to fly to Sado and land on his hand. That was the signal they had developed. About ten minutes later, he came out the back door.

Unusual for him, he initiated the conversation.

"Are you being watched?" What? That was what he started with? She noticed he was completely serious.

"Nooooo... not that I'm aware, and I can usually tell if someone's following me pretty fast." Whenever she smelled the same scent, especially when moving around the village, it was a pretty good indicator she was being tailed. It was usually just a couple ANBU that checked up on her every few weeks or so.

He fidgeted. "Someone's been asking around about you. She came by here." She? Fu was instantly attentive. She had a nagging feeling she knew exactly who it was.

"Long red hair? A bit short? Talks kind of like a guy?" Sado looked surprised at that, but nodded. Fu went on. "Yeah, I ran into her yesterday. She pulled me out of an alley when there were a couple drunks ranting at me. It looks like she might be a foreign ninja or something."

So she had been in this alley too, huh?. She tried to remember the smells from the alley and overlay them on the ones here. The only common thing was a trace of paprika. Not good enough for using it to find the girl, but a good start. And she had that beetle tracking her down anyways.

"Well, she really scared me when she showed up. She's definitely quiet enough to be a ninja. _And_ she somehow knows I'm giving you food." That... that was a bit disturbing. Sado could be easily ruined with that kind of information.

"I thought she was going to try and blackmail me or something." He seemed a bit lost at that, like he had no idea what he'd actually do if that happened. He collected himself. "But, she just left after I said I wouldn't tell her anything about you. I might have mentioned your name by accident. I can't really remember, I was pretty nervous." She waved that concern off. She wasn't really worried about something like that. Everyone in the village knew her name, if just to curse it. The girl had probably already learned it.

"I think... she might have already known a lot about you from other people, which is why she left so easily." Sado finished. Yeah, that would make sense. She'd just cut her losses and decided move on.

"Well, I'll go and find her later today. Try and find out why she's so interested in little old me. She might be some sort of spy for another village, trying to get information on the jinchuriki." Sado looked concerned at that. "Sado, I'll be _fine_. I probably won't even need Seven's help. And if I really need assistance, I'll get backup and we'll capture her." No. That would never happen. But it would make him feel better.

"Alright, just, be careful. I've got to get back to work, my break's over." She waved goodbye to him, and jumped on nearby roof.

Now to find the girl.

She located the scent of the beetle she'd tasked on the west side of the village about two hours later. The traces of paprika were particularly strong in this area too, so that had to be her. Fu decided to play the waiting game. She could be patient. She sat on the roof of the building next to where she thought the girl was. She'd startled Sado, huh? Well, maybe she could give her a taste of her own medicine.

Fu sat there for a few hours, trying to get Chomei to talk to her, and then just giving up after he decided to be a grump. He could be super cheerful, oddly thoughtful, or a complete grouch. And anywhere in between. She didn't really know what caused it. But she did know the kabutomushi would help her out if she was really in trouble, if just because he'd decided she was his 'favorite' so far.

She laid back on the tiles of the roof, looking up at the clouds, and starting picking out shapes to pass the time. She could hear the loud sounds of woodwork from inside the building she was shadowing, so it wasn't like she would be unaware of any changes. The girl must have been around for a bit if she had been able to get a job. Maybe it was an assisted infiltration?

It was a bit later than she expected that the noise finally ceased, and Fu waited a few minutes before hopping down into a side street, preparing to play her slight prank on the unsuspecting girl. She leaned up against the wall and waited. Sure enough, a door opened, and the female beetle's scent got exponentially stronger, along with that aroma of paprika.

But there was something else there too, that was subtle enough that she'd missed it before. It smelled a bit like salt, but different. It almost reminded Fu of one time she had gotten a mission to the coast. The locals had harvested their own salt from the ocean, and it carried a hint of kelp due to how it was processed. So paprika and... sea salt? She'd never come across a combination like it before, and it piqued Fu's curiosity. What were her origins, that she would smell like that? She must have grown up right on the ocean or something. She also had a slight tang of oil and the woody scent of sawdust, but those didn't seem to be coming _from_ the girl, just attached to her. So she'd gotten them on her somehow.

She waited until she heard footsteps approaching (and Sado was right, the girl was quiet), and then she stepped out from behind the wall. Alright. Intimidation time.

The redhead seemed unnerved by her appearance, and Fu was internally pleased that she'd shaken the girl. Didn't like it so much when it happened to you, huh? It might have been a bit vindictive and petty, but Fu tried to take pleasure in the small things in life. It was all she really got.

The redhead asked if she could help her, but she sounded completely different from yesterday, and appeared to be off-balance. Good.

Cutting all emotion off in her voice, and making it as cold and hard as she could, Fu replied. "You've been asking around about me. Why?"

The girl seemed surprised at that, and her reaction was almost comical. Eyes slightly widening and jaw going slack. Well, it wasn't like she was expecting it, right? And she'd been snooping around. Being caught red-handed like that must be pretty embarrassing for a ninja. Of course, it was only because of Sado. She'd have had no idea otherwise, but probably still would have confronted her about yesterday.

The redhead seemed at a loss for words, and Fu decided to voice her question again, with a bit more pressure to try and jump-start her. "Why?" When the girl didn't reply immediately, Fu started saturating the air with her chakra mixed with some of Chomei's from a fraction that he had perpetually allowed her access to. Seven tails was nothing to scoff at.

The girl's eyes widened even further. Fu knew she'd hit the point where the animal instinct in her brain had been screaming at her, and then suddenly stopped, being overwhelmed by incomprehensible fear of confrontation with a creature that was orders of magnitude stronger. It was a tactic she'd used on a few missions when she needed to get information _fast_, but it tended to turn civilians into quivering piles of goo afterwards. She didn't use it in the village for the obvious potential negative consequences.

"I-I don't know." What? She stared at the girl, locking eyes with her, trying to gauge the verity of her response. Fu kept the pressure on, hoping that something more was coming. When it didn't, she resigned herself to smelling the air around them, trying to catch any hint that the girl was lying. All she found was the expected extreme nervousness, but nothing else that indicated falsehood.

Fu had two options. She could (seemingly) trust the girl, changing tactics, and hopefully get more from her that way. Or she could try and call the potential bluff, which would totally backfire if she was wrong.

She decided to switch tactics.

She released the pressure from the air, and the redhead almost stumbled.

"You're nervous. But you're not lying." Fu bluffed, nodding. She dropped into her usual mask persona of a bright, cheerful girl that she used to interact with clients on missions. It wasn't exactly her preferred persona. But it came the easiest to her from years of usage.

Now that the pressure was gone, Fu could practically _see_ the gears turning in other girl's head, whirling at a breakneck speed. That was a fairly common reaction after being exposed to Chomei's chakra. At least for more seasoned ninja. Which further confirmed the theory that she was one.

The girl's mouth opened to say something, and Fu was a bit shocked that she was able to start talking so quickly. There was usually a recovery period of about three minutes before ninjas were fully lucid again. Most of them tried to run away at that point. Fu had hoped that the cheerful act would get the girl to stick around, but it appeared to be more effective than she had hoped. Well.

She'd have to keep that in mind.

"How did you do know that? How did you even know where I was?" The redhead asked.

Fu frowned internally at that. She wasn't willing to give up her abilities _quite_ so quickly. Particularly to a possible threat. Fu wasn't worried about the girl herself, she could _easily_ handle her from what she'd seen. Probably with just taijutsu alone. But it was the information getting back to a source that could give her trouble, like another hidden village, that she had to be careful about.

She _could_ choose to tell the girl something that was commonly known to the rest of the ninjas in the village that had ever worked with her or assigned her missions, as that information could easily be acquired just by asking about the 'demon' around a bar with shinobi in it. So it wouldn't really help her anyways if it turned out that the redhead was a spy. Fu got an idea in her head, and decided to be a bit dramatic.

Holding out a finger, she called the beetle that was on the girl to her. It flew over to her finger, and she followed the beetle's wandering path as it lazily walked around. Apparently it found the redheaded girl's scent pleasant. Somewhere in the deep dark depths of her mind, Fu secretly agreed.

"Female beetle. The Aburame use a special breed, but I can use any." The girl adopted a look of confusion, and Fu narrowed her eyes.

The girl's emotions and thoughts were almost pathetically easy to read. How had she managed to survive as a ninja? Or was it all just an act, like herself? And she didn't know one of the major clans of Konoha? That was basic Shinobi Tactics 101: know all you could about someone who could turn out to be your enemy. Fu knew at least _basic_ information on all the current major clans scattered across the Elemental Countries, just to have a leg up if she ever got in a fight with one of their members.

Was this girl really that naive? Or was she just arrogant in her abilities, thinking she didn't need to prepare for any possible conflict? Unknown to Fu, it was actually the latter one. Orochimaru had made the Sound Four attend a briefing done by Kabuto on Konoha, which included information on all the clans, but Tayuya had just tuned him out instead of listening to him drone. Which is why she had known about neither the Nara nor the Aburame.

Deciding to humor her, she answered the redhead's unasked question. "They're a clan in Konoha that use insects for things like tracking." Now. How to go about explaining what she could do in a way that would let the other girl draw her own conclusions...

"The answer to both of your questions is pheromones. I can smell them. It's a... special ability that I have." There. Nothing that the girl couldn't find out through other sources. Fu was unsurprised when the girl showed interest at that. It was the first thing she had given away so far.

Maybe she could play another slight trick on the girl. She decided to bait her and watch her reaction, keeping an eye out for any potential cracks in a false facade. It would be amusing no matter what happened.

"Humans produce them too. When they're nervous, or upset, or happy, or _aroused_." Dear Kami. _That_ was a shade of red she hadn't seen before.

There was no way this was a mask. She was just completely unguarded. It was actually rather refreshing. Ninja usually went for calm and controlled, keeping their emotions on a tight leash, but the redhead appeared to be completely incapable of it. Clearly, Fu has not met Naruto.

"That's how I knew." Fu tapped the side of her nose. "After all, the nose knows." She pretended to giggle at the bad pun. Her laughter seemed to sooth the girl, and the redhead's face gradually returned to its' previous color.

The other girl's curiosity seemed to be boiling again, and she couldn't contain the question that bubbled past her lips. "How did you know I was asking about you?" Really? She hadn't exactly been careful. She'd virtually cornered Sado, even when she knew that they were in contact on a regular basis. It wasn't very hard to connect the dots. The girl probably already knew, and just wanted confirmation.

Fu thought about it. If she didn't respond, the girl might go and confront him again, and it was only sheer luck that someone else hadn't been at the back door. If someone else was there, and she requested to meet with him now, it would start raising questions that Fu _really_ didn't want asked. It could potentially lose Fu her main supply of food, and at worst it could cost Sado his job. Fine. She'd confirm it. If just to try and make sure the girl didn't start screwing things up with her nosing.

"Sado. From the market. All he said was a girl with vibrant red hair had been asking about me, but I knew it had to be you." The girl grimaced in at the reminder she had been so easily discovered, identified, and accosted.

"Alright. Just, please don't put a beetle in my hair or again." She shuddered. "No offense or anything."

Fu was speechless. She didn't like bugs? That was _ridicuosly_ ironic when paired with the girl's obvious burning curiosity towards Fu and the fact that Fu was what she was. A living container for the biggest insect to ever exist. She clamped down hard on her amusement, but still couldn't stop the laughter from welling up. It was just too funny. Releasing the failed attempt at keeping it down, she rolled with it, and tried to use the genuine laughter as a way to lighten the mood. She leaned against the brick wall on her left, clutching at her stomach as her abdominal muscles started to hurt, still laughing.

"H-Hey. You alright?" The redhead seemed slightly concerned for her. Fu might have been having a _little_ trouble breathing, but just she waved the girl off. Calming herself, and trying not to think about it, she started taking deep breathes. It was paradoxically hard trying to avoid the thought though, and it kept popping to the front of her mind, making her actually giggle.

The redhead's mouth turned became a pout. Well, maybe it was a frown, but it definitely looked like a pout on her.

"Whatever I did, it wasn't _that_ funny." Maybe not to her, but it was absolutely _hilarious_ to Fu.

She rushed to think up an appropriate excuse. The girl's tomboyish appearance might be enough of a contradiction for the redhead to believe Fu would find it funny. She pushed off the wall and stood up.

"Sorry, sorry. It's just. You should have seen yourself. You're absolutely covered in sawdust and grease from head to toe, and you shudder at a thought of a _beetle_?" It was kind of a lame excuse, but Fu started giggling again, not able to stop thinking about the massive kabutomushi inside of her.

Tayuya started giggling with her. It sounded a bit harsh and unnatural coming from the girl, like she wasn't used to laughing. But it slowly became more natural, and Fu quickly got the impression of waves lapping at a shore.

She thought back to yesterday, the redhead was normally blunt and abrasive based on what she had said and the way she had said it. Now knowing that the girl simply could _not_ conceal her emotions, she figured that she had truly only been trying to help. Even if it went against the redhead's apparent natural personality. She had gone out of her way, and Fu hadn't responded very kindly.

Guilt nagged in the back of her head for practically biting the girl's head off. Why was she getting guilty? She tried to figure it out. That emotion was not something she wanted hanging over her head. In a spark of insight, she realized that _no one_ had ever stepped in and stopped the abuse before. Ever. Sado was there for her after the fact, and she had used him as support back when the words bothered her, but he'd never actually stumbled across her while it was happening. With the recognition of what the source was, the guilt got a bit worse.

She did not want to feel indebted (however little) to another person who could end up being both an enemy and a spy. Though she was truly doubting that anyone would be misguided enough to send the redhead as a spy. Unless that was the point. To use her to soften her up. Fu's brain started to hurt from the levels of duplicity she was considering.

Would it be out of her cheerful character to apologize and just cut it off? She just wanted to get rid of that persistent discomfort at the back of her mind. As long as she played it right, she could probably pull that off.

In the time she had been thinking, the redhead had stopped her slight laughter, and the girl stood less tense than before. Perfect.

Fu tried to make it seem like she was just eccentric. "I like you. Sorry about yesterday." The first part was past her lips before she could stop herself, and Fu wondered why she had said _that_, before coming to the shocking conclusion that she had actually meant it. She did like the redhead. Now that she was fairly certain the girl wasn't out to get her, at least in the short term, she could simply enjoy the fact that the girl was so unguarded. Ugh. Her subconscious was doing weird things again.

She watched redhead's reaction. Complete surprise. Fu hadn't expected anything less, and she wasn't disappointed in the slightest. The girl fumbled for a response before managing to sputter "Uh, sure. You're alright yourself."

Fu felt a warm feeling spread through her body. What? Why did that make her so happy? She was starting to get nervous and antsy. She needed to get away and figure out what the hell her brain was doing when she wasn't looking, and why this girl was affecting her like this.

"Well, I guess I should get going, now that I know you're not trying to do anything bad." _From what you've said at least._ "Ninja stuff and all." She loved that excuse. Perfect for all situations. And it was technically true, she was a ninja. Therefore, anything she did was 'ninja stuff'. Fu turned around and walked down the sidewalk, preparing to jump to the roof right next to her.

"W-Wait!" Now what? She turned around again. "Do, do you want to come over some time? Maybe for dinner or something?" She was inviting her over for dinner? ... And she was being completely serious about this wasn't she?

Memories of the last person who invited Fu over to get to know her flew unbidden to the front of her mind, and for a second she was trapped in the past, experiencing it again. She wrestled control over her thoughts and threw the memories back into the metaphorical steel box where they had been. She hoped the girl hadn't seen that lapse.

Quickly putting her mask back up, Fu smiled, and nodded. Why had she nodded? She was going to say no! She needed to get out of here, **now**.

"Do you know where?" She had said she was a tracking ninja, hadn't she? She gave the girl a false giggle and tapped the side of her nose.

"Oh, right." Fu turned around and shunshined to the rooftop, trying to put as much distance between her and the girl as quickly as possible.

She heard the girl shout behind her "Wait! Is Friday okay?" Trying to avoid having to go back and give an actual response, Fu simply offered another forced laugh that floated through the air.

That night, thoughts of red-haired girls kept her awake.

* * *

><p><em>Thursday<em>

Over the next two days, she was hyper-sensitive to the smell of paprika and sea-salt. Whenever she came within 300 meters of the girl, she could smell her. And yet, she found herself unconsciously following it around the village, soothed by the scent. It bothered her.

Thursday went by quickly, and she finished her missions faster than normal (tilling a field and picking up trash in a forest). The she felt the eyes of the red-haired girl on her twice, as Fu bounded around the village, and she laughed each time at the thought that someone was so interested as to _watch_ for her. It was a new experience. And she was disturbed by the emotions that she felt.

She needed to talk to Sado.

* * *

><p>Her discussion with him was not as productive as she had hoped. Oh, Sado shed a lot of light on things that she wouldn't have thought of, but it didn't give her the answers she wanted.<p>

He had initially been concerned that the girl was a spy when Fu confirmed she was a ninja, but once Fu explained how unguarded and open the girl was, he agreed with her conclusion that the girl was not investigating Fu as a jinchuriki, but as someone who was merely interested in the situation. When she had told him about how she found the girl's scent distractedly soothing and how the girl seemed to have the uncanny ability to worm her way under Fu's skin and make her lose control of her emotional walls, Sado had just smiled and said that her subconscious might be trying to tell her something, like to try opening up to the girl.

Sado told her that while he was a good sounding board, he wasn't really 'friend' material for Fu, and he knew it. They were more like siblings, and didn't have _too_ much in common. But she and this girl might. And it seemed like she might be looking for one. So he urged her to go to dinner, and try and keep an open mind, giving the girl a chance to just show her intentions. Without the preconception and assumption that the girl was out to get her.

Fu would try. But in her experience, everyone _was_ out to get her (Sado the single exception). The girl hadn't _seemed_ lonely, but maybe that was due to the situation. Fu had rattled her pretty badly. And really, no matter what she told herself, that moment when she had felt happy? She wanted to feel it again.

* * *

><p><em>Friday<em>

Friday came, and Fu was wound as tight as a spring from the anticipation, she _wanted_ to believe Sado, that the girl was only trying to get to know her due to curiosity and interest. But past experience had taught her that meeting someone in their own home was usually ended much worse than a more... neutral meeting place. So she wouldn't let her guard down quite yet. Maybe if this went okay. She'd still use happy-go-lucky personality, as it was what the girl already knew, and Fu didn't want to alarm her by acting completely different.

Following her nose, which seemed to be more attuned to the girl's scent already (she avoided thinking about what that could mean), she reached the north section of the village. It led her to a small shop, specifically the second floor, which seemed to have a basic flat. It looked pretty simple, but nice. Nicer than her place, at least. Her home was not really suited for much more than sleeping and eating, and that's all she did there.

She reached the door, and knocked sharply on the door. She heard a large 'thump', and smirked to herself. The girl seemed to be fairly excited. A loud "Coming!" was yelled through the door. The girl's scent absolutely saturated the air, and Fu could feel her nervousness slowly slipping away. She was still uncomfortable with that effect, but decided to just be glad that she wasn't as tense anymore.

The redhead opened the door, and the girl seemed to look her over. Hadn't she seen her already? Fu decided to start things off.

"Hi!", she smiled, showing her pearly whites off to the girl, trying to give a better impression this time. The girl smelled just as nervous as Fu felt. Maybe this was new for her too?

The girl just replied "Hey", and opened the door the rest of the way to let Fu in. Fu took her sandals off at the genkan, noting the girl's own black shinobi-issue sandals. Fu started looking around the rest of the room, trying to get a feel for it.

"It's really nothing amazing, but it works. And it's cheap. It's just a simple 2DK" the girl explained, moving to the door that Fu assumed led to the Dining/Kitchenette area. Based on the storefront below, and the workshop the girl worked at, these living accommodations must have been part of the job.

"Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I _was_ going to start prepping the food before you got here, but I sorta fell asleep." Fu giggled, giving the girl what she thought she expected.

"Okay." Fu sat herself down at a cushion around the table in the center of the room.

"So, I've never really done salmon, but I wanted to try it." the girl said. She laughed nervously, and moved over to the counter next to the stove. "Do you eat vegetables?"

"Yep!" she replied. Of course she ate vegetables! They were an important source of nutrients and fiber! She needed a fairly balanced diet in order to maintain her training, and vegetables were part of that.

Fu continued to look around the room. It was painted a nice light shade of blue, which would reflect and disperse light from the large window at the front. There was a couch up against the wall behind her, and a TV over in the corner. A couple basic pictures of Taki decorated the walls, including a panorama of the Great Tree that sheltered the village. It was pretty tasteful, all things considered.

A string of expletives flew out of the redhead's mouth, and Fu moved her attention to the girl. "What's wrong?"

"Don't worry about it. It's just a little cut." the girl said over her shoulder. Uh. When people cursed like that, it usually _wasn't_ because of a 'little' cut. Fu got up and moved over to the girl, standing next to her over the sink. The girl's left hand had a large gash bisecting it from top left to bottom right. And it was bleeding. A lot. She must have hit an artery in her palm.

"That.. does not look like a little cut." _In any sense of the word 'little'._ "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'll be fine. I just need something to wrap it up." _No, what you need is to get to the hospital_, Fu thought.

The girl rinsed some of the blood off of her hand, but more quickly replaced it. She squatted down and stuck her head under the sink, presumably to find a towel or something to help staunch the bleeding.

And then the blood on her hand became _less_. Fu almost wiped her eyes to make sure she wasn't seeing things, but there was definitely less blood. And then tissue started to sew itself back together, in front of her eyes. Fu gasped. There was a loud _thunk_, and then "Shit!". The girl pulled her head out of the cabinet. "What? Did it get worse?"

Fu couldn't reply, mesmerized by the sight of the wound rapidly closing up, still sucking blood inside of it.

The girl looked at her hand, and seemed just as surprised.

"Well, fuck."

* * *

><p>Fu could hardly believe it. Was the girl another jinchuriki? Was that why she was so drawn to her? It would explain a lot. That was the only thing she could think of that would give someone <em>that<em> fast of a healing ability. She made sure the girl was alright, and then sat back at the table.

She really needed to talk to Chomei. She quickly looked around, before delving into her mindscape, keeping part of herself paying attention to what was going on outside her body, ready to react at a moment's notice.

"Chomei!"

She rushed through the fortress that represented her mindscape, and came to the representation of her seal, three walls with gaps at the corners. Chomei sat in the center, curled into a ball on his side, wings tucked in his back.

"Chomei!" She tried to get his attention.

**"What **_**is**_** it, hatchling? I'm trying to rest."** Oh great. He was in another one of his moods.

"Yeah, yeah, but this is more important!" At that, he uncurled, and swung himself around so that the great big visor-thing that seemed to act as his eyes was in front of her.

**"Oh? Really? I hope so."** He may have been grumpy, but both of them knew he wouldn't really do anything. He was the only thing that had been a constant in Fu's life longer than Sado. But unlike Sado, he wasn't really able to help her when it came to personal matters. The bijuu _weren't_ human, and thus could never think like one. But Chomei was usually up for a good conversation when she needed it.

"Did you see what happened?" Fu asked. No, of course he didn't.

**"No, as I said, I was resting."** Yup.

"The redhead girl!"

**"Ahhh. Yes. The fair-scented one who has been on your mind. What about her?"** Chomei seemed amused by something, and Fu had the distinct feeling she was missing it.

"She cut her hand, and then it just healed! Like, in seconds!" At that, he brought his head down to her. "Do you think she could be another jinchuriki?"

Chomei stared at her through the gap in the walls. **"Hmm. Perhaps. Kurama's hosts are usually gifted with large reserves of chakra, as well as a highly increased healing factor. She shows both traits, and **_**does**_** have the capability to contain him due to her heritage."**

"What do you mean?" What did parentage have to do with hosting a bijuu?

**"The Kyuubi-"**

"THE KYUUBI!?" Was he saying that this girl could potentially host the _Nine Tails_?

**"Yes, Kurama is the Kyuubi, now, as I was saying, Kurama has a great deal of chakra. He equates tails with power, and while that isn't necessarily true, he is the strongest of us all, having received the greatest portion of our progenitor from our father."**

Fu was surprised at how forthcoming Chomei was being. They had never really discussed the other Bijuu, as before now he had seemed reluctant to talk about the others. Why was he being so open now? Had something changed? She'd have to think about it. And maybe ask him later.

**"Because of this, his host is required to have a high concentration of Yang chakra, which reinforces their body and allows them to contain his enormous amount of chakra. This girl fulfills that requirement, though it appears she is not aware of it, as her Yin chakra abilities seem to be even higher, suggesting years of usage and practice."**

"So it's likely?"

**"Yes. However, I am not convinced."**

"Well, I think that her healing that fast is pretty convincing. It was absolutely amazing to watch."

**"Kurama is unable to enter into the shared bijuu space and talk to the rest of us, and he usually refuses when he is able, so we are unable to confirm it in that manner."** Chomei's voice gained a rosy tint of mirth. **" How about we make a **_**bet**_**?"**

Fu almost groaned. She should have seen that coming. Chomei loved things like wagers and games, even if they were inconsequential. He blamed his nickname of 'Lucky Seven'. She just thought it was silly. But she'd humor him.

**"You will attempt to subtly probe her to see if she is a jinchuriki, as she appears still unaware of your own status. If she confirms that she is the host of Kurama, you win. Otherwise, I win."**

"Urgg. Fine. The stakes?" Nothing was ever simple with him

**"If you win, I will allow you to use 5 tails for the next week in your physical training, instead of the usual 4 that you seem to have gained control of. If you lose, I will hold you to some favor at a future time."** That was pretty standard choices for him. And it was helpful for her if she won.

"Alright, alright." She'd have to be careful about voicing this to the girl. Maybe alluding to the number of tails? The girl was older than her, so if she _did_ contain the Kyuubi, she would know, as whatever village she had been a ninja for would have trained her by now.

**"I will watch. I am curious to see the result."** he said. That was abnormal. Usually Chomei didn't care what went on outside. Maybe this was a bigger deal for him than she assumed.

She brought herself back to awareness, just in time for the redhead to put the food down on the table. She sat at the table to the left of Fu, and served herself some of the fish and vegetables. Fu's mouth was practically watering. It smelled _delicious_. She quickly mimicked the girl, and then started eating.

_Oh, Kami_. It was amazing. She savored the first few bites, just letting the taste of the seasoned fish melt in her mouth.

The girl cleared her throat."So, uh, whats your name?"

Fu had to quickly swallow to prevent the food from coming out. She started laughing. What the hell? How did the girl not know her name? _Everyone_ knew it. How could she not have managed to pick it up when she was looking around? Fu slapped the table, and tried to catch her breath.

"A-All this time, and you didn't even know my name? Didn't Sado tell you?" the other girl shook her head. Sado had said he might have told her, but apparently even _he_ hadn't. She had gone the whole week not knowing Fu's name. Fu ignored the fact that the reverse was true, as information on the redhead wasn't exactly easy to come by, _unlike her_.

Fu slowly manage to stop laughing. "Oh man, I have got to tell him about this. He thought you had already found a bunch of dirt on me, and was just going to blackmail him. It was almost pitiful when he told me." She wiped a tear from her eye. This was the perfect opportunity to try and feel the other girl out.

"My name's Fu. And I'm number seven." She said nonchalantly, getting back to the amazing meal. She kept an eye on the girl.

"Tayuya." she replied. Huh. Pretty name. Not what she would have expected.

She didn't seem to catch the reference to the bijuu, but Fu was going to make sure, even if it was a little blunt for her tastes.

"You aren't number nine?" Fu asked.

"I have absolutely no freaking idea what the hell you're talking about." Well. There went that theory. And she might have just accidentally given the girl too much information in the process. Not good.

**"I win!"** Chomei shouted happily in her head.

_"Yeah, yeah, you won this one."_ _Again_

Fu laughed at herself out loud to hide her nervousness."Well, I guess he won that bet. I was totally sure this time, too. His streak of luck continues."

**"That's because I'm the Lucky Seven! Well, and it was suspicious there was none of Kurama's chakra in her body."**

_"You know, you could have mentioned that __**before**__ we made the bet."_ Now she just felt like she had been cleverly manipulated.

**"It wouldn't have been as much fun watching you though!"**

She decided to ignore him. He got a bit hard to deal with after winning something. She tried to divert the topic.

"The food's great, by the way. You really don't need to be nervous. I'm not going to bite your head of or anything. Well, I'll try not to, anyway." She grimaced internally, hoping that what she had done on Wednesday wouldn't come back to haunt her. Tayuya didn't seem to hold anything against her because of it, and just acted as if it hadn't happened.

The other girl sputtered "H-How did you-". Fu tapped the side of her nose in response. Really? This was the third time that she'd mentioned she could smell things like that. The girl _must_ be catching on at this point.

The room fell silent as Fu continued eating, enjoying every bite. The rice wasn't as good as the fish or the vegetables, but that was to be expected.

"So, uh, how old are you?" the girl asked her. Alright, proper conversation now.

"I'm fifteen." she answered. Not like that changes how the villagers act.

"You live with your parents?"

Fu froze as her mind shut down, and she struggled to keep her thoughts away from _them_. She did not want to get infuriated right now. It would ruin the dinner. "No. I'm by myself, over in the eastern section."

"Well I'm only seventeen." Huh. She looked younger than that. But appearance can't tell you everything. She went on. "have you been a ninja for long?"

"Yeah." Fu replied. Her mind automatically jumped to Chomei's sealing, and how they had made her a ninja immediately after, pressing her into service. That had not been enjoyable. And people had begun to show their true colors. This was _not_ the time to be reminiscing or getting sucked into her emotions. She managed to fight back the wave that encroached on her feelings and push them back.

Fu tried to deflect the conversation, in order to keep Tayuya from asking to many questions, as each one seemed to want to drag her back into the past and her memories, kicking and screaming.

"You're a ninja too. Or used to be." she stated. Fu gauged the girl's reaction. She had expected more surprise, but Tayuya seemed almost resigned at the airing of that fact. Well then. "Don't worry, you're secret's safe with me." Fu didn't want the rest of the ninja finding out and taking away the first person who had acted nice to her since Sado. And she was pretty damn sure this girl wasn't a threat to her, or the village. Her intentions were too unguarded, and all they seemed to be focused on right now was Fu.

Tayuya let out a sigh. "I'm technically not a ninja anymore." she said, as if that excused everything. Fu raised an eyebrow. That either meant she had resigned, or deserted. And that she wasn't following orders to be in the village. So she was only here for herself.

"Anymore?"She wanted to hear more about this. The girl only nodded. It seemed there were a couple things she wasn't willing to talk about.

"But how could you tell that? Don't tell me it's your nose again." Fu laughed at that. No, the girl's behavior practically _screamed_ ninja. She didn't need her nose for simple observation.

"Nope, you're wayyyy too quiet. You don't sound like a civilian when you move around. And you're too fluid and conservative in your motions." Fu pointed at the stove. "Like when you were cooking." Before heading into her mindscape, she had seen the girl in motion. It was perfectly efficient, no wasted moves. Something like that only came with _years_ of practice.

"So where are you from?" Fu asked. She was curious about this ex-ninja girl's origin. And maybe her answer would explain her strange scent.

"Originally? No idea."

Hm. That was too bad, but not terrible. She had clarified the question, which meant she was trying to avoid answering something else. Probably about her shinobi village. Fu decided to pry to find out, mildly curious what she was trying to find. "No, as a ninja." Fu said, restricting the subject.

Tayuya cursed, and Fu heard it and laughed. She'd hit the nail on the head.

"Sound." she replied softly.

Oh. Ew. She had not expected that. Sound was currently gaining a reputation, and not the good kind. Fu'd heard horror stories of what was going on. Nothing good could come of Orochimaru leading a shinobi village, especially after she'd heard the reasons he'd been run out of Konoha. Experimentation of the worst kind, with hundreds of children being used as the subjects. It was not the sort of thing you wanted to think about before you went to sleep.

The redhead tried to defend herself. "I'm not with them anymore! I said that!"

Huh, that was true. At least the girl had decided to get out while she still had her head. Fu had never heard of _anyone_ deserting Sound before, making Tayuya the first.

"Well, at least you wised up." Fu allowed some of her bitterness to seep into the statement. She didn't want to be associated with anyone who condoned or assisted in the depraved things that madman did. Some of it had sounded _much_ worse than what jinchuriki went through in their sealing.

"Yeah." Tayuya agreed, seemingly at a loss for anything else to say in response.

The redhead looked up at the wall to her left, and Fu followed her line of sight. It was already 8:30? She needed to be getting home so she could get to sleep and get up early tomorrow for training.

Fu stood up from the table. "Well it's getting pretty late, I should probably get going. It was really good dinner, thanks." While the conversation hadn't been the best, it seemed that was more from inexperience on _both_ their parts, so she could hardly blame that on Tayuya. The food on the other hand had been _amazing_.

"No, thanks for coming over. You're, uh, kinda the first person other than my employer I've really hung out with in town."

What? Really? That warm feeling spread out through her body from her gut, and instead of quashing it this time, Fu allowed herself to enjoy it.

"We should do this again sometime." Tayuya offered, a bit awkwardly.

She had no problems with that if she got food like this. Except there was the festival next week. Which meant she would be busy with D-ranks for the festival, trying to improve her reputation (she didn't even know why she even tried anymore, really), and that she would be avoiding the civilians as much as possible other than that. "Alright. Let's wait until after next week, and see how busy things are." she acquiesced.

Fu walked to the genkan to put on her sandals. After she was done slipping them on, she turned around to Tayuya. "Well, thanks again." Fu opened the door, and walked outside, closing it behind her. Instead of jumping away like usual, she walked down the stairs, enjoying the scent of paprika and sea salt as it tickled her nostrils.

Fu heard the door open behind her, and a shouted "Hey!". She turned to look back up the stairs, where the other girl was. "Uh, would you be willing to spar with me sometime?"

Oh, this was interesting. Fu allowed herself her first real smile in the girl's presence. The girl seemed to falter at the sight of it, but continued ."I need to improve my hand-to-hand, and you seem like you'd know what you're doing." Fu's smile stretched wider.

This was too good to be true. The girl _wanted_ to spar with the taijutsu specialist? Well then. She'd just have to accommodate her, wouldn't she? "Alright, then. We start tomorrow. 7am. Meet me in the eastern section. I'll find you." Fu shunshined away, bounding over rooftops.

* * *

><p><em>Present <em>

And now she was here, bounding over houses, trying to clear her head from the fogginess that Tayuya seemed to introduce. It was hard not to let her guard slip around the girl, even if she had been less wary than on Wednesday. Fu had allowed herself to flow through the night, worrying less about what the girl said, now that she knew her intentions weren't harmful in nature. And the redhead seemed to exude this aura that made Fu want to open up to her. She thought it was partly her comforting scent, but the girl's bluntness also meant that she didn't have to worry about any of Tayuya's feelings being hidden, and that her expressions said everything about how she felt.

It was refreshing, and Fu found she preferred it a lot, as opposed to the rest of the shinobi, who would act friendly enough on missions, and then go and talk behind her back, spreading rumors. She got the feeling that Tayuya was literally _incapable_ of being insincere.

Maybe a friend wouldn't be such a bad idea.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

So I, uh, watched that last Naruto movie since it was written by Kishimoto, and NaruHina can be cute. I won't give spoilers, but good god, that intro sequence. The biggest thing I'm pleased about is that Hamura gets some focus. Cause, you know, we have like 50+ chapters of Hagoromo. Glad to see he has his own ridiculous OP eye hax, and it wasn't just that his bro that got everything but the Byakugan from their mom. I'm still wondering why Kaguya wasn't able to squash team seven, but whatever. (It took both Hagoromo _and_ Hamura together to stop her the first time. Team seven was working with half the power, bits of the knowledge, and none of the experience.)

I had a lot of fun with this chapter. It's so _different_ writing Fu. Tayuya wears her heart on her sleeve, but Fu is extremely calculating and guarded when she's around people she isn't comfortable with. She truly started to open up to Tayuya during their dinner, but she's still got a ways to go.

I FINISHED THE ENTIRE OUTLINE. That's right, this story is fully outlined, chapter by chapter, scene by scene. That means the only excuse I have for not writing is life getting busy, which I don't see happening anytime soon.

I've got thirty more chapters, at least. With most of them looking like 7500 words average. So yeah, all those of you worried that this is going to be abandoned or not completed? Over my dead body. So I'll probably end up posting one chapter a week. That, uh, theoretically means I'll be posting until mid-June.

I hope you enjoyed the homage to Kushina's nickname that I managed to sneak in there. If you didn't get it, go look up _paprika_ on Wikipedia. It was really just for laughs.

As always, please read and review! (And maybe follow if you're interested?)

ensou


	5. Work and Play

**Disclaimer:**

Were the Goken and Juken the only two martial arts styles referred to by name? If so, I don't own Naruto, or any of that universe.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 5:<strong>  
><strong>Work and Play<strong>

Tayuya woke at five thirty in the morning on Saturday, and just couldn't go back to sleep. So she gave up trying to get a few more minutes, rolled out of bed, and dressed herself in some semi-shinobi-ish gear.

Her clothes consisted of her black stretchy shorts that reached to just above her knees, and a simple red qipao-style top that went over a mesh undershirt and her breast bindings. All in all, it allowed her a great deal of movement, without sacrificing much. It didn't hurt that she liked the colors, either.

Once she was satisfied with her appearance (despite still being sans hat), she went to the kitchen and blearily prepared herself breakfast. A folded egg omelet, some rice, and instant miso. She ate in silence, listening as the birds outside slowly started their goddamn racket, announcing another day.

When she was done eating, she put the dishes in the sink and looked at the clock, groaning. It was only 6. Fu had said to meet her on the east side at seven, so Tayuya had 45 minutes to kill.

She sat back down at the table, pulling out one of Shin's scrolls. She was practicing advanced wind chakra manipulation, and had been able to create a circle of rotating sharpened air above her palm, like a miniature chakram. Shin had told her in a letter that it usually took months, if not _years_ to accomplish that level of shape manipulation, and Tayuya had preened at the compliment. It was nice to find something other than music that she was good at.

Not to say she didn't love her music. Because she did, more than anything else. But she seriously needed some variety in her combat styles. She was solely a long-range combatant, and only really had her genjutsu and her doki summons (plus the now-gone curse seal). That's what she was trying to fix.

Over-specialization could become a ninja's death sentence if they were paired up against the wrong opponent and were unprepared for the worst. And that was exactly what had happened.

So she was trying to focus on her ninjutsu and close-quarters. She knew enough taijutsu to just barely get by, but she knew it was pretty bad. And it was probably nothing compared to Fu's. That girl looked like hand-to-hand was _all_ she did.

Maybe kenjutsu would suit her? Some kenjutsu styles were closer to dance, as Kimimaro had demonstrated, and Tayuya had enjoyed dancing a couple times, following the rhythm of her songs. She'd have to think about it. Trying to learn too much at once wasn't good either. It would just overload her.

Tayuya turned her attention back to the scroll. The next step was trying to create the mini-chakrams above each of her finger tips, exercising the control of the tenketsu that were there. The progression went something like: splitting a leaf (finished in hours), splitting a piece of wood (completed the next day).

Then things had gotten more complicated. Shin had said that the next step was usually cutting a waterfall, but that would be pretty conspicuous, so they had skipped that, and moved right along to the next thing, which was creating blades of wind from the palms of the user's hands.

Tayuya had seen Kabuto doing something similar with medical chakra, and attempted to integrate the palm-blades into her (improvised) taijutsu style, but it hadn't worked out. So she'd moved onto the next step, which was blades from her fingertips. And from there, the chakram in her palms. Bringing her to this step.

When she had been working with the wind-circles over her palms, she'd discovered that her chakra seemed to flow easier in one direction than the other. She'd asked Shin about it, and he had written back, saying that it was due to the direction of chakra flow in the central coils coming off her reserves. Everybody was either clockwise or counter-clockwise. Tayuya was a counter-clockwise person. It didn't really affect anything other than shape manipulation that traveled in a circle. But it was handy to keep in mind.

Keeping her focus, she channeled chakra to her right index finger, the one that she found she had the most control with naturally, and tried to _push_ the energy into a rotating circle above her finger, while converting it to wind. All she managed on the first try was a circular breeze. Nothing like the stable, razor sharp shape that she was aiming for. She gave it another try, and only got the breeze going a bit stronger. Not being fully awake didn't seem to be helping her concentration.

She worked on the exercise for thirty minutes, alternating fingers every five. So far all she'd gotten was a small, ephemeral circle above a couple fingers, but it was still insanely fast progress. When it was about time to leave, she stopped, put the scrolls away, made sure she was ready, and headed outside.

After locking up, Tayuya started heading in the abstract direction of 'east' that Fu had given her. Weaving through streets, keeping an easy pace, getting her muscles moving and warmed up. She fell into a rhythm, and unconsciously began tuning things out.

Until she was startled by Fu dropping right next to her.

"Fuck!". Blood pounding from both the exercise and being startled (though it was more the shock), she slowed down, but tried to keep in motion to keep her muscles from clenching up.

"Hi!" Fu said happily. _**She's**__ in a good mood._

Mornings... weren't really Tayuya's thing. The other guys had learned it quickly: Stay out of her way until she'd been awake for an hour or two. Even Kimimaro hadn't bothererd her. She was fine on her own. But being around anyone else set her off pretty easily.

However, she _had_ asked Fu for the help. So she'd have to try and keep from biting the girl's head off.

"Hey." Tayuya gave her a weak smile.

"Not a morning person?" Fu asked. _No, but you seem to be one._

Tayuya just shook her head silently, not trusting her mouth to say anything nice.

"Well, you should be awake by the time we get there. We'll be going to one of the Taki training grounds. You _technically_ shouldn't be there, but I don't really care what they think." Tayuya raised an eyebrow at that. So there was no love lost between her and the shinobi, either. What the fuck was keeping her in the village?

The green-haired girl slowly led her through the streets, towards the outskirts of the village, where houses started becoming wide farms. Once they had passed the densest of the civilization, Fu turned around and gave her a smirk.

"Wanna go faster?" she asked.

"_Please_." Tayuya hadn't had a chance for real tree-running since traveling from Fire Country to Se-shi.

They picked up the pace tremendously, and soon ended up leaping through trees. They parted to show a simple clearing with a small stream on one side, and some targets and straw dummies. There was also a thick wooden pole with three pieces sticking out of it at odd angles, and Tayuya assumed it was for practicing hand-to-hand. It looked like it got a lot of use.

Fu had been right, too. The last dregs of stupor had worn off, and she was fully awake now.

"This is basically my private training ground. Nobody else comes around here, so... I just sort of took it over." the green-haired girl explained. Was that from everyone else avoiding her, or what?

Still looking around, Tayuya voiced her primary question."So uh, what do you usually do?"

"Well, I usually start of with a series of katas to keep my body limber. I get the feeling that I'll be paying more attention to you though." Tayuya felt herself heat up at that. It wasn't like she _wanted_ to trouble the girl, her close-quarters-combat was just really lacking. "But don't worry about it. I just do them for consistency now."

"So you specialize in taijutsu?" She'd assumed as much, but she wanted to know more of the specifics.

"Yup! I've mastered one style to a level I'm comfortable with, an open palm. And I'm working on a closed-fist style now." That was pretty impressive if the girl was telling the truth. "Though both of them have both types of strikes, it's more what the styles lend themselves to."

"... What do you mean by mastered?" Tayuya asked. They weren't talking Orochimaru's Hebi-style mastered, right? He'd been doing that for 30 years.

"Well, why don't I show you? We'll have a little match, and I won't hold back." Tayuya suddenly got the sense that this was a _terrible_ idea.

"A-Alright." Tayuya got into a simple opening stance that allowed for quick defense, anticipating Fu's attack.

Fu smirked as she lowered herself into a more aggressive stance, and kept her palms open, her hands and elbows in front of her chest.

"When you're ready." the green-haired girl said.

Tayuya hardened her expression, but was internally resigned to her loss. Now it was just a matter of seeing how _long_ she could last.

"Start." _Holy shit._

And then Fu was kneeling on her chest, while Tayuya laid on her back in the grass.

Her mind struggled to replay. She had seen Fu coming at her, and kicked at her midsection, trying to maintain distance. Fu had deflected the strike, and stepped _into_ her immediate area, simultaneously trapping her leg with her own, and pushing her chest down with a series of light rapid strikes and punches to her neck, chest, and abdomen. If the strikes had been any heavier, they could have collapsed her airways the two times Fu had hit her neck. She had flowed like water, yet been as solid as a rock.

Tayuya knew her taijutsu wasn't good by any means. But it had done well enough against Sakon and Ukon when they had practiced. Fu had torn that to shreds.

Fu stood up from her position, while Tayuya just sat breathing heavily from the blows. She propped herself up on her hands, looking at the girl above her.

"How-How long did it take you to get that good?" she asked, trying to catch her breath.

"A few years of constant practice, every day. That was **Eishuken**, the Fist of Eternal Springtime, and was the first style I decided to learn, as it's more suited to defense and quick movement, instead of strength, and a lot of the style can be learned on your own. It also raises an extreme awareness of where your body is, and that helps when learning later styles." Fu's face darkened a little. "I started learning it when I was six, from scrolls."

_Six? That's pretty early for non-wartime._

Fu continued. "Eishuken was actually developed by a woman, and it emphasizes fluidity, flexibility, and relaxation. There are six forms, or exercises: three empty hand, one wooden dummy" At that, Fu jabbed a thumb over at the weird wooden post. "and two weapon forms, one with a pair of short blades, the other with a polearm or spear." _That _statement raised Tayuya's interest. So this style could be applied to a wide variety of things, and easily adapted towards weapons.

"What I showed you was only a small part. True fights with a practitioner of Eishuken lend themselves to extremely fast blows, parries, and deflections, which is particularly effective against other soft styles such as the Hyuuga's **Juken**. The other style I'm learning is called **Seishin no Ken**, the Fist of the Inner Spirit, which is a hard style, and a bit more aggressive." More aggressive than _that_?

"You must have spent _forever_ on that." Tayuya said, more than a little awed. Fu blushed from the praise, a bit embarrassed by the attention.

"Nah, not really. I'm not particularly good at anything else, though I do have some ninjutsu for back up. Taijutsu is where I'm the best. I use chakra to enhance my body when necessary, and I can usually overpower anything I come across. I didn't do that in this fight though. That would have just been unfair." Tayuya stuck out her tongue at the girl, and Fu giggled in response.

"Why are you telling me all of this?" Tayuya asked. It was unusual to share so much about the basis of one's style.

"Welllll. Your style isn't good for you. You've got a lot of holes." the green-haired girl explained. Tayuya grabbed Fu's offered hand and hoisted herself up.

Tayuya tried to regain her last few shreds of dignity in the face of an outright expert. "I-I don't really have a style. It's mostly just what I picked up." Plus the bits of _Hebi_ that Orochimaru had deigned to teach the sound four.

"Haha, yeah, I could tell." The redhead cringed internally. Was is really that bad? "If you want, I could teach it to you, your body type is good for it. The other style needs a lot more muscle and strength, since it focuses on hard blows."

"Why would you do that? Isn't that a threat to you?" Fu looked at her weird for a second, and then turned her head to the sky.

"Nah, I've never met anyone else who can even recognize the style I use, and it's not like _you're_ going to do anything to me, right?" She looked back at Tayuya, and Tayuya started to get that same feeling when Fu had confronted her on Wednesday. Complete domination. The sense that you would be no challenge to destroy.

It wasn't something she was used to feeling, and it made her uncomfortable to not know how to respond. She knew at some point she would encounter people stronger than her, but Fu really didn't give of that aura most of the time, and the snake had been on _their_ side. It was usually her enemies quivering in their sandals.

"N-No! It's just, you're sharing your main method of combat. I don't want to take your thing away from you." she hastily explained her reasoning. Fu looked suprised for a moment, and then laughed.

"It's not really _my thing_. And it would take you years of work to get to where I am anyways. I'm not too worried or so insecure that I would feel threatened by someone else learning it." Fu gave her a grin. "So, how'd you like to replace your taijutsu with something a little better?"

Tayuya smiled at the green-haired girl. "Yeah, I'd like that."

* * *

><p>Fu was a slave driver. Worse than Orochimaru, even.<p>

In the three and a half hours they'd been working, she'd run Tayuya through a few of the starting stances, and had her move between them at the drop of a hat, checking for errors and correcting her every time. It was _very_ slow going. Tayuya did not have any skill in, nor the predisposition for, taijutsu. Unlike her shape manipulation.

After that, Fu had decided to give Tayuya a break, as she wasn't really used to this much physical work. She had wandered over to the stream, and washed some of the sweat off of her face and arms, filling up her water bottle and drinking from it before heading over to an area of shade, next to some large trees at the edge of the clearing, sitting down with her back against one.

Fu was working with that wooden post thing, which she had introduced to Tayuya as a good way to get transitions and deflections into muscle memory, as well as a training tool that helped raise awareness of limb placement. Her arms were a blur, and a constant 'thwack-thwack-thwack' could be heard across the clearing.

Fu was _ridiculously_ good at taijutsu. The only person she'd ever seen possibly better than her was some bushy-eyebrowed, green-leotard wearing guy who had taken a couple people out in front of Tayuya while she had been maintaining the barrier for Orochimaru in the Konoha Invasion.

But he had nothing on the grace and fluidity that Fu expressed, and Tayuya much preferred the appearance of the two styles that she had shown her. She'd run through a couple katas of each, and then did a few shadow fights, and Tayuya could see what she meant about 'hard' versus 'soft'. The hard style focused a lot more on blows, punches, and kicks, and even her elbows and knees. In contrast, the Eishuken had been more parries and deflections, moving _with_ the simulated attacker and then striking against them in a quick flurry of motion. It was like watching some kind of natural predator. Tayuya doubted that she'd _ever_ be able to match the girl.

Drawing her thoughts away from the green-haired girl, Tayuya decided to continue practicing her shape manipulation exercises from this morning. Apparently after the finger-tips step, she was supposed to transition to trying to get the mini-chakrams to manifest at tenketsu that almost never got used, like the back of the hand, elbows, and shoulders. But for now, she was focused on her right pointer.

After forty-five minutes of failures, Tayuya finally stabilized a whirling blade of wind above her finger. It had been much harder creating them on her palms for the first time, as she hadn't gotten the feel for the flow of the chakra and its shape. But her fingers were going easier than she had expected, probably due to the amount of time she had put into getting it right on her palms.

"Whatcha doing?" Fu popped up from behind the tree trunk on her right.

"Shit!" The circle flew off of her finger, nearly straight up and to the left, cutting through branches and and leaves, bringing them crashing down to the ground next to them. Fu watched the destruction unfold, a little wide-eyed.

"Stop doing that! That could have killed you!" Tayuya admonished. The stress alone would cause her heart to collapse.

"Nahhh. I would've been fine. And you make it too easy not to. You're cute when you're caught off-guard." Did she really just say that? Fu looked just as shocked as Tayuya felt. "Ehehe. A-Anyways. What was that?"

Deciding to ignore the girl's remark, she answered her. "Advanced shape manipulation practice with wind chakra. The guy who was teaching me this told me I was some sort of prodigy or something."

Fu squatted down next to Tayuya, and kicked her legs out so she was sitting against the tree as well.

"Huh. I'm terrible at stuff like that. I have a wind nature, and I can do a few jutsu, but that's about it." What the hell was with all of these people with wind chakra that Tayuya kept running into? Wasn't it supposed to be the rarest nature type? Fu brought the number up to 4. First that fan bitch, then Shin, then Tayuya herself, and now Fu.

"Yeah, I've got a water affinity too." Tayuya said. She'd managed to get the hang of converting to water nature chakra easily. It was just finding things that she could do with it that was difficult.

Water Release only truly lent itself to manipulating liquids. And a liquid wasn't sturdy enough for the things she kept thinking of. It couldn't carry an edge without a _lot_ of practice, and was more of an area-effect and defensive nature. Maybe that was something she could look into.

Fu looked surprised. "Two equal affinities? That's pretty rare, isn't it?"

Tayuya nodded. "Yeah, but it's not a bloodline or anything, so it was just as shocking to me too."

She decided to demonstrate. "All I can really do with water right now is this." She brought up a circle of water over her palm, but it was simply a circle, and the water flowed lazily counter-clockwise. "Water's not very suited for what I want. Spin it too fast, and it flies apart." She quickly move her palm out from under it, and the water ring dropped to the ground, splashing and covering the grass in droplets.

"I'm _trying_ to figure out how to work some of these blade things into my mid and close range styles. Anchoring them on my body is a good close range tactic. Mid-range, well." She spun up a larger wind circle on her palm and then pushed it in the direction she wanted with another burst of chakra. It flew silently, perfectly straight, and cut right through the center of a tree trunk. And another. And another.

Fu whistled. "Wow. Yeah, I can see that being pretty effective."

"The idea is that because it's all just shape manipulation, you can do more with it." At that, she brought a few of the straight blades into existence from the tips of her fingers. "But... these don't really mesh well with what I do either, and I haven't really thought of anything else."

Fu started thinking. "Well, if you could somehow wrap wind around your arms and make it spin fast enough, whenever you deflected on the outside, a the limb would be pushed away, and if you deflected on the inside, they'd get pulled towards you." Fu smiled sheepishly. "Sorry I can only think about things related to hand-to-hand. It's kinda most of what I do."

"No, it's a good idea." Tayuya countered. It was a good idea.

_I'll just probably never get to try it because I avoid taijutsu fights._

"So what other things do _you_ do?" the redhead asked. Fu was pensive for a moment.

"Not much." Fu replied. Tayuya wanted to run her palm over face. "I have a couple distraction jutsu that let me get in close and attack. But between those and the physical enhancements I can do, I've never really had a problem with just relying on taijutsu. I'm not susceptible to genjutsu for a couple reasons, so hand-to-hand is usually my best bet."

"What sort of... enhancements?" She was sure the girl didn't mean anything like the curse seal, but other than something external like armor, she couldn't really think of anything . Except... "The Eight Gates?" Tayuya questioned apprehensively.

She hoped not. Those things were crazy. Messing with your own _built-in_ limits to try and get extra power? And she'd heard they could get permanently screwed up and stuck if you fucked with them too much.

"Nah, nothing like that. Hm." Fu thought for a second before continuing to explain. "Well, you know that lady, Tsunade?" Tayuya nodded. "I can get about three-quarters of her strength into a strike, based on the stories I've heard. And my skin hardens, giving me a bit of an invulnerability to blunt attacks."

_So basically, you're a tank._

"I don't have that instant regeneration thing that I've heard about her having. But it's not too big of a problem, as I can heal from a lot, it just takes time." It still didn't really answer _how_ Fu did it, but Tayuya was willing to let the girl keep some of her secrets.

"Damn. Well, I can see why you don't really need anything besides taijutsu with stuff like that." Fu smiled and nodded.

Speaking of regeneration. That brought Tayuya's thoughts back to the night before. What were the extents that Tayuya could heal? Yesterday had been the second time (that she was aware of). She'd practically lost her legs the first time. What would happen if a limb got removed? What if she was beheaded? That was a morbid thought.

It'd happened twice now, and the two incidents were almost three weeks apart. Which pointed to it being a permanent thing. She was still hesitant to start testing the limits of it. What if there were a limited number of uses? Or she did something irreversible? Yeah. She was going to avoid intentionally activating it if possible. She didn't want to find out she pushed the tests too far, and now couldn't use her left hand or something.

"So you want to get back to working on stances?" Fu asked, a slightly sadistic grin on her face. Tayuya groaned.

"Fuck. Fine. Let's do it, _sensei_." She said, a bit mockingly.

Tayuya pulled herself up from her position against the tree while Fu simply pulled her legs under her and stood up. Gods, the flexibility and muscle control she demonstrated while doing seemingly normal things was unreal.

Maybe this would help her get something like that.

* * *

><p>They worked for another two hours before breaking for lunch. Fu had brought some onigiri, while Tayuya had made a bento for herself. After she caught Fu eyeing her food a couple times, she gave up and offered some to the other girl.<p>

After that, they let themselves digest a bit, and just talked about places they had gone on missions, Fu not having traveled very far out of Waterfall. So Tayuya had described to her what it was like in the Land of Rice Paddies, and the times she had gone to Hot Water, Grass, and River Country. She avoided talking about Water Country. She didn't want to ruin the conversation.

Fu drilled her on her stances again after that, trying to get the basics into Tayuya. As she said: "Stance is everything. Without a proper stance, there's nothing to build on."

After another two hours, they decided to call it a day, with promises of doing it again tomorrow. Fu seemed to be enjoying herself just as much as Tayuya, and they both agreed that she needed a lot of work, bringing them to the conclusion that this would probably be a daily thing.

Tayuya didn't mind at all. She might even go so far as to say she _liked_ being around Fu. It was nice. The green-haired girl was serious about teaching, and didn't try to coddle her and most importantly, didn't give any of the bullshit of Tayuya having trouble because she was a girl like Sakon and Ukon had pulled. The other three boys in the Sound Four had been mildly sexist, Kidomaru being the worst, and Tayuya had hated it.

If she could've introduced them to Fu, they'd have been singing a different tune.

* * *

><p>Tayuya was walking around the village, trying to find a music store. She'd gone home and showered, and switched into more 'civilian' clothes.<p>

The first one she'd found hadn't sold flutes, only string instruments. So she'd ended up asking the guy behind the counter, and he'd written a list down of all of the ones he could think of in the city that might have what she was looking for.

The second shop she had gone to had told her that there was only one shop in the village that had flutes, and she was mildly ticked at the first shopkeeper for not telling her that. It was kind of his responsibility to know those sorts of things.

So from the second shop, she'd headed to the one they'd told her about. It was near the center of the village. Which meant she had been walking all over, first to the west, then to the store in the south. And now to the center. But she was willing to do it, if it meant she got a new flute.

Which is where she was now, standing at the entrance. She prayed to whatever gods were listening that this would be the last store. The sign over the shop door declared "Danbo's Music Emporium". Weird name.

She opened the door, and was momentarily frozen by a blast of cold air. Well, at least it seemed like they were doing when it came to instrument care. Maintaining a constant humidity and temperature level kept the instruments from going out of tune as quickly. It didn't matter as much for woodwinds, but strings and percussion were notorious for changing with the atmosphere.

She stepped inside the store. "Hello?" A man came out from a door at the back of the shop. He was fairly average height, with brown hair, but wore eclectically colored clothes. Tayuya thought he was little odd, but as a musician that wasn't uncommon.

"Well hello little missy." _Oh, __**fuck**__ no_. "What are you interested in?"

"I'm looking for the woodwinds." She answered tersely, trying to keep her eyebrow from twitching.

"First time player? You might be more interested in thes-"

"I'm looking. for. the. freaking. woodwinds." She gritted her teeth, and exuded a little bit of killing intent.

She wasn't some fucking novice. She knew _exactly_ what she wanted. And if he continued to be condescending and demeaning, she'd show him _precisely_ where he could shove his beginner's instruments. Up. his. ass.

"R-right. Uh, right this way."

His attitude did a complete 180, and Tayuya smiled to herself. Good. She still had it. She'd been worrying that trying to be nice had dulled her intimidation abilities. But apparently not.

The man took her over to a room on the left. There was a side wall covered in various instruments, and Tayuya's eyes automatically jumped between the five flutes she could see, gauging them. She immediately threw out two of them from her choices. Those were actually piccolos. And she preferred the lower range of standard flutes. The one she'd used before was a keyless eight-hole flute made out of a single piece of silver-plated brass. It was simple, easy to maintain, and sturdy.

Her eyes alighted on one that she'd missed. It was a twelve-holed keyed flute, and had intricate leaf patterns etched into the silver extending from the lip plate to the opposite end. The patterns were done in such a way that each segment didn't disrupt the design. It looked sure looked pretty, but that was no gurantee for the sound.

Tayuya lifted it off the wall, and put her fingers on the body, getting used to the positioning. It was a little different in finger placement than her eight-hole, and the finger combinations would be different, but that wouldn't be hard to figure out.

She blew a test note, and frowned when it came out a bit flat. She rolled the flute's body a small fraction away from her and tried again. The sound came out clear and crisp. She tested out the keys, getting used to the notes and extended range that she hadn't had before, and then switched to trying a few scales once she'd run through all the notes a couple times and memorized the finger combinations. She wouldn't play any of her songs on it in the store, but the sound and timbre was beautiful.

Normally she wouldn't even think of getting something like this. But now that she probably wasn't going to be getting into combat situations (at least she hoped not), she could at least _entertain_ the idea of getting a more complex keyed flute. It would require a bit more standard maintenance, and there would be no way in _hell_ that she'd take it into a fight, but she was buying this more for pleasure than as a tool.

She needed the release of playing, not a weapon to defeat other ninja with. On the off chance that Orochimaru sent an assassin or something and the Taki ninja didn't catch them, an auditory genjutsu would take time to set up. Time that an assassin wouldn't give her. Her taijutsu lessons with Fu would help more with getting rid of a would-be-killer than a genjutsu. Tayuya was severely disadvantaged in a enclosed space. And she knew it. It wasn't like she could summon her dokis in the middle of the village, either. _That_ would raise some interest in her she didn't want. So this flute wouldn't be as much for battle, as for herself.

She brought the flute away from her mouth, and was inwardly pleased at the shopkeeper's expression. Yes. She was that good. No beginner's instruments for her.

"You have a good eye." The shopkeeper told her. Tayuya puffed up at the compliment, even if it was from a civilian store owner.

She looked over the instrument, and appreciated the good craftsmanship . It couldn't be _too_ expensive.

"How much is this?"

"Two hundred thousand ryo." WHAT!?

"TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND!?" That was ludicrous!

"W-well, yes." The shopkeeper hurried to explain himself. "It's solid sterling silver, hand crafted. And it's a newer design that fixes some of the maladjustment problems most keyed flutes have. It's a professional-grade instrument."

Urgh. She eyed the flute. She couldn't afford that. She hadn't even made that much working for Yamada yet. This was the first time she'd wished she was still an active shinobi. They made so much more money.

Reluctantly placing the beautiful instrument back on the shelf, she went back to the other three she had been considering. One looked a lot like her old one, and she decided to try it out.

It wasn't _amazing_, but it was nicer than what she'd had before, if marginally. And it was probably for the best in the long term anyways. If she suddenly needed to leave Taki, it would be better to have something she _could_ fight with than something she couldn't. She knew she had really only been trying to talk herself into buying the keyed flute when she had considered it before.

Her flute was really the only thing she had any battle experience with. And a weapon like that was invaluable to have on hand. Her shoddy (though now improving) taijutsu and her shape manipulation was really the only other things she had. Her doki were controlled by sound, and she wasn't really willing to say that she wouldn't get into a situation where she didn't need to summon them.

So it looked like a keyless flute was a better bet _anyways_. She sighed to herself. The other one had sounded so beautiful. But there was really no escaping the fact that she needed a weapon she knew.

"How about this one?"

"Twenty one thousand ryo." Much more doable. It would set her back a little, but not too badly.

"Alright. I'll buy it."

Taking the flute from her, she followed him back to the room she had entered. He went to the back room, and came back with a plastic case which she assumed it had been placed in. He rung her up at the register, and she payed in cash, pulling the money from the small bill-clip in her pants. She took the flute from the counter and walked out of the shop, ignoring the "Have a nice day!" from behind her, heading in the direction of home.

* * *

><p>"TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND!?" Fu winced. That <em>was<em> a lot for an instrument. Not that she knew anything about music. But it _seemed_ like a lot. And based on Tayuya's reaction, it was. She was on a roof opposite the shop, and watched through a window as the redhead put the flute back on the shelf's little holders.

She hadn't _meant_ to follow the girl! Honestly! After they'd split up, Tayuya had headed off, and Fu had gone down to the southern area of village. She'd just hung around for a couple hours in the park, and walked around, ignoring everyone's looks.

Her nose had caught a whiff of that damn tantalizing scent of paprika and sea salt, and she hadn't even registered that she was following it until she was at the door to a music shop. She had quickly jumped up onto a nearby roof to stay out of Tayuya's line of sight, and wondered what she was doing in there.

Fu hadn't really pegged the girl as an artsy type. Though her job _did_ seem to deal with a lot of crafting and woodwork, so she couldn't write it off. Maybe it was a hobby or something? She didn't expect to know the redhead perfectly after only three meetings, but it seemed so... _tame_ for her.

After she'd gone home last night, she'd realized just how much she had enjoyed the dinner with Tayuya, and had been looking forward (if slightly apprehensively) to the impromptu offer she had made on the spur of the moment to join her for her weekend training. But everything had gone perfectly. And so Fu had finally decided to just enjoy herself, and let go. She didn't regret it.

Tayuya was a hard worker, especially when something wasn't easy for her. She would probably never be perfect at taijutsu, but with the amount of effort she was putting in, Fu thought she might be able to get the girl up to a pretty good point in a few months. She stopped as she realized what she was considering. Only dinner and a training session, and she was already thinking about her relationship with Tayuya as a long term thing. Well, relatively long term considering all of her other 'friendships'. Oh, man. She was getting really attached to the redhead, wasn't she?

Tayuya had exited the music shop in the southern quarter, and made her way (rather hastily) to another shop that was in the central district. Fu had followed at a safe distance, her curiosity piqued by what the redhead was doing. Clearly she was trying to buy something, but what?

Fu had been amused by the shopkeeper quivering a little. Clearly he'd made some assumption and Tayuya had been quick to correct him. She could certainly see Tayuya being fairly intimidating to civilians who weren't expecting the girl to be as brash and aggressive as she could be.

She'd gotten a glimpse of that on Tuesday, when the redhead had pulled her out of that alley. But since then, Tayuya had been much more subdued and calm. Fu got the impression that the girl was trying really hard to be less... caustic.

Inside the shop, the man had led Tayuya over to a wall of long, pointy looking instruments. What? Fu was no music expert.

Tayuya had picked one off of the wall and played it with some measure of talent, based on the reaction of the store keeper. She seemed very satisfied with it. And then she had repeated the price. At such a volume that Fu had heard, across the street.

Clearly, she wouldn't be getting that one. The redhead placed the instrument back, and took another one, but didn't seem to have the same enthusiasm while playing. But she seemed resigned to this one, and ended up paying for it.

Fu quickly ducked behind an A/C unit, to keep Tayuya from seeing her as she exited the shop and walked away. She was practically stalking the girl! That was a concerning thought. She leaped away, in as much an opposite direction of Tayuya as possible.

She wished she could have some of her food for dinner tonight. The bento had been yummy, but Fu could really go for some good dumplings, and she got the feeling Tayuya would make them perfectly. Her stomach growled, and she sighed. It looked like another lonely night by herself.

* * *

><p>Sunday came, with blinding sunshine and warm temperatures.<p>

The girls met up again in the morning, and Fu continued to teach Tayuya the Eishuken. Tayuya brought two bentos this time, and Fu ended up eating hers quickly, but still seemed to really enjoy it.

Tayuya worked a bit on her idea of water manipulation, and was trying to figure out way of slowing the movement of the water or a crystal form. Both of which pointed to ice. She had heard of something like that from the Orochimaru's interest in the Land of Snow, but not much else.

In the Land of Water during the blood wars, there had been a clan that had had a bloodline limit that allowed them to create Ice using some combination of Water and Wind. Most of them had been killed before she had been sent there, but people had been telling stories of one kid who apparently had killed a dozen men with it, including his own father. Maybe she could emulate it?

As far as she knew, bloodline limits only gave the ability to _instinctively_ combine different kinds of elemental chakra. Maybe it was possible to combine them on their own? Shin kept saying she had gift for nature transformation and shape manipulation, so maybe it wasn't out of her reach. She vaguely wondered why Orochimaru hadn't looked into things like their elemental affinities, before remembering that he had wanted puppet soldiers and really only seemed to care about their own bloodlines, and not much else.

She'd have to try combining elements later when she was alone, as it had the potential to be pretty dangerous, and Fu didn't have the same healing factor that Tayuya seemed to... not that she was going to be intentionally testing that anytime soon.

Since Tayuya didn't really have anything planned for the rest of Sunday, they had kept training nearly until the sun went down (taking breaks every couple of hours), and cooled down with a series of katas that Fu had her imitate. She decided to invite the girl over for dinner again as a way to thank her for her help, and Fu had practically jumped at that. Allegedly her cooking was really good? Tayuya didn't think it was anything special, but if Fu liked it, she was pleased _someone_ enjoyed it.

She had voiced her thoughts on the pseudo-Ice Release over dinner, and Fu had only offered words of encouragement, saying that while she would probably never be able to do something like that, Tayuya seemed to have a real gift and that she should go for it.

Tayuya noticed that Fu seemed much more open and vocal over the past two days compared to Friday night, but kept those thoughts to herself, not wanting to reverse the progress she had made and make the other girl clam up. Fu left around nine this time, but said she'd be back, if just for the food. Tayuya knew she was only kidding, but it still made her inordinately pleased that she had managed to connect with someone else.

They made plans to meet up every morning for the next week, starting early in the morning so that they'd get some practice in before Tayuya had to go to work. Tayuya appreciated that the green-haired girl was going out of her way to help her so much when she wasn't obligated to.

And so, the week of the festival arrived.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

Dun Dun DUUUNN. We're finally going to get to some drama. Hoo boy.

I've seen a couple fics where Fu is jutsu-focused. I decided to take a different approach. Rhinoceros beetles are known for their great physical feats and ability to exert forces far beyond their body weight. Therefore, in this story, Fu is a taijutsu specialist, and only uses regular jutsu to augment that.

Fu's martial arts styles are Wing Chung and Hapkido respectively. Eishuken is the official Japanese translation for Wing Chung. I don't really know a lot about martial arts, so most of what I'm writing comes from research and watching videos (Ip Man 2 was surprisingly educational). Don't hate on me if I get something minor incorrect, please, but if you have any constructive comments I'd be more than open to them.

And with a name like "Eternal Springtime", you'd think Guy and Lee might be open to learning such a style. :P

Odd factoid I learned in reasearching:  
>The Hyuuga's Juuken is based on Bagua Zhang, right down to the usage of 8 trigrams (Bagua) and 64 hexagrams, a "circle" (field of divination) which the user uses as a guide, and the smooth coiling and uncoiling actions in striking.<p>

As always, please review. (And maybe follow? Things are picking up. I swear.)

ensou


	6. Old Faces, New Feelings

**Disclaimer:**

Did _Naruto_ ever show romantic development between two characters of the same gender? If not, I don't own Naruto, nor any of the associated universe.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6:<strong>  
><strong>Old Faces, New Feelings<strong>

Fu and Tayuya met up both Monday and Tuesday morning, continuing to practice together. Tayuya was coming to appreciate the benefit of having someone teach you a taijutsu style, instead of learning it on your own. Especially when that style suited you, and your teacher was a master. It made catching and correcting mistakes earlier on much easier.

Tayuya would then go and work with Yamada on the last sets of masks, while Fu went off and did a mission or two. They met up for lunch, and ended up just talking about various things, like kunoichi clothing, and senbon vs shuriken vs kunai (Fu was an avid kunai proponent, as she could use them up close). Both of them just found themselves relaxing and having fun, which made them happier overall.

Wednesday brought a change of pace.

The first day of the 'Tree of Life' festival had a different schedule for both of them, and while they managed to meet up for training before work, they had to forgo lunch as Tayuya was busy setting up the mask stand with Yamada. Fu still found her and offered to help, ignoring the stink-eyes of the people around them. There was a lot of carrying heavy boxes of the wooden masks, and Fu's aid had made things _much_ easier.

Yamada was too boring to even really care that Fu was helping them, more grateful for the assistance as 'his back wasn't what it used to be'. Tayuya secretly thought he didn't even know what Fu's reputation was, as he didn't seem to talk to anybody at all other than her.

They managed to finish setting up the stand around three-thirty, with at least two or three of every type of mask they had made spread out on the table, and a great deal more in reserve behind the counter. Yamada asked her if she had any yukata, and Tayuya had hesitantly replied in the affirmative.

He'd asked her if she'd be willing to wear it, as something like that usually helped to attract customers, but it wasn't until Fu had said she was rather curious to see what it looked like that Tayuya reluctantly agreed to wear one. She wasn't some eye-candy to look pretty. Kimono weren't really her thing either.

She went home and showered, before laying out the three garments she had that Yomi had given her. Tayuya eventually settled on a black one with a red-pink cherry blossom pattern. It was a bit flowery for her preferences, but the others were even worse in that regard. She picked out a red obi, and tied it around her waist. She didn't do anything to her hair. Fuck that. Swapping her ninja-sandals for geta, she headed back to where the stand was at the center of the village,

Fu said she looked nice, and that was all that she really cared about. She didn't give a shit what other people thought.

The festival was starting to really gear up around five-thirty, and the mask booth was busy enough that Tayuya had to tell Fu she would try and find her later, as there was no way she would have a chance to step away for dinner. So the green haired girl had headed off, slipping between the throngs of people.

It was almost eight before the crowds of people around their booth died down, and Yamada had said that's what it was usually like, with most people coming for the masks at the beginning. He'd told her he could handle it from here on out, and that she should go and have some fun, but he'd need her help to temporarily pack the stand up for the night, since they still needed it for the next two days.

* * *

><p>After searching for nearly an hour, Tayuya finally found Fu, cornered in an alley <em>again<em>. But this time, she was surrounded by a dozen people, all of whom seemed to be calling her names and voicing their opinion that Fu should go and die somewhere far away.

Tayuya growled. Why did she just let them do that to her? From what she'd seen of the bright, cheerful girl, there was no reason for it.

Almost running forward, she nearly tripped because of her geta, but caught herself before she fell.

_Goddammit. Note to self: Fast walking only in these things_

She got to the end of the alley and pushed through the scrum. The group, unnerved at the presence of an outsider, immediately stopped their taunting, allowing her to slip through them towards the green-haired girl.

Fu's orange eyes were vacant and dull, showing none of the vibrancy they usually held. Tayuya moved in front of her, ignoring the crowd at her back that seemed to be shocked at the intrusion, and started snapping her fingers in front of her face.

"Fu! Come on, come on, snap out of it."

After a couple seconds, her eyes started to brighten.

"Tayuya? What're you doing here?" she asked groggily.

Tayuya chuckled, a bit of darkness seeping into the sound. "We've _really_ got to stop meeting like this."

The group behind her broke into a low murmur. What was the girl doing? Why was she helping the demon?

One person stepped forward out of the group. A middle aged man wearing glasses. "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing! Why would you help it!?"

"IT!?" Tayuya rumbled and spun around. "I should be asking _you_ the same fucking question! What the fuck do you think you're doing!?"

The group seemed to be uncomfortable at the question, until one person spoke up at the back. "We're teaching it a lesson!" There were murmured assents at that, and they seemed to grow their collective spine back.

Tayuya started seeing red.

"Well, that's too bad." Tayuya grinned viciously. "How about _I_ teach _you_ a lesson instead?" She started cracking her knuckles, and leaked a little intent to harm. She had a strict 'no fights because of emotions' rule, but they were civilians, and thus didn't count, and she was getting pissed off at the way they were acting.

A hand on her arm stopped her. "Don't." Fu's voice broke through her rage-induced haze. "Just don't"

Tayuya stopped stepping forward and turned her head around to look at the green-haired girl. "It's not worth it. _They're_ not worth it." she said softly. Tayuya wanted to yell at her and say '_**They**__ may not be, but __**you**__ are_ '. Because Fu _was_ worth it.

Fu had spoken soft enough that the gathering wasn't able to hear her, but evidently one of them had seen her lips moving.

"What are you saying you bug bitch!? Come over here and tell it my face!" Tayuya snarled at the comment. She really, really, _really_ wanted to punch something. What the fuck did they think justified treating her like this? There was absolutely nothing that she could think of. Fu was too nice for anything that would get her this sort of attention.

But Fu had asked her not to. And Tayuya would respect that. So she clamped down on her anger and shoved it to the back of her mind. "Fine. Let's just go." she spat.

She started walking forward again, edging towards the collection, pushing them back towards the entrance of the alley. The motion slowly agitated the cluster of people, as they were stepping back to keep a distance between themselves and Tayuya, and the friction and agitation reached a boiling point. One of the voices tried to appeal to Tayuya.

"Don't let it trick you! You just haven't seen what it's really like! It's a monster!"

Tayuya looked back at Fu. In a moment, all the blood had drained from the girl's face, and she looked like she was about to fall to pieces. She started breathing rapidly, and Tayuya realized that the girl was beginning to withdraw into herself in protection from something. What had set her off? She tried to think of something she could do.

Seeing Fu's hand hanging limply, she reached for it. Grasping it tightly, she squeezed. Fu's breathing seemed to slow down a bit at that, and the color started coming back to her face. Good. Tayuya seethed at the fact that they had almost caused her to shut down again, this time from panic instead of voluntarily.

She turned to the group and leveled an arctic-cold glare at them.

"You're wrong. She's my friend. And I wouldn't care even if she was a 'monster', because _at least she's better than you_." Fu's head snapped up towards Tayuya.

"And right now, the only _monsters_ I can see here are _you_ and your _fucking imaginations_." she hissed. Tayuya wasn't aware of the frost that began crackling and coating the walls around theqm, spreading out from her feet in a venous pattern. A wind rose up from behind the group that felt like it went right through their clothes and straight to their bones, blowing harshly.

Tayuya strode towards the entrance on a warpath, too intent on leaving to notice the '_crunch_' of ice beneath her wooden sandals. The group had stopped moving backwards, and when she got within five feet, she growled. "Now get the _fuck_ out of my way." If they didn't move, she was going to end up making them.

Luckily for them, their sense of self-preservation seemed to prevail, and the conglomeration split down the middle. Tayuya stalked past them, unable to even look at them from the amount of pure, unadulterated _fury_ she was feeling.

She couldn't stop walking. If she did, she'd go back. And she really didn't want to disappoint Fu. Not right now when the girl seemed to need her.

The festival was still in full swing, and Tayuya wove through the crowds, moving without any real purpose, just moving for the sake of moving. Moving for the sake of getting further away.

She felt a tug on her hand, and turned around. They had stopped in the middle of the street.

"I-I think I should go." Fu mumbled. Her voice was flat, and devoid of feeling, barely noticeable from the surrounding commotion of the festival.

"What? Why?"

"I just... need to get away. Away from the people." Fu's state reminded her of glass: strong in certain areas, but liable to shatter if you hit just the right spot.

Was this what she had been like in Shin and Yomi's house? If so, the last thing the girl needed was to be completely alone. She would just internalize, and Tayuya could see the thinly veiled vulnerability and roiling emotions that Fu tried to keep from showing. She wasn't comfortable leaving the girl alone like that.

"Alright then, lets go." Tayuya ignored Fu's incoherent sounds of denial. She turned around again, still holding Fu's hand to keep her from escaping, and pushed through the crowds, searching for somewhere quiet and out of the way.

She didn't know where she was going, but walked forward anyways. When they found a park that the festival ran alongside, she decided it would have to do. Pulling Fu along, she moved away from the festival, and towards a secluded area shadowed by trees, raised up a little, and surrounded by a short stone wall.

"This better?" she asked. She hoped it was, this was the best they were going to get for now.

Fu just nodded. Tayuya looked her over. She _looked_ okay. But it still felt like she was seconds away from something snapping.

Tayuya realized she was still holding Fu's hand, and hastily let it go. Fu's face flickered for a moment, but Tayuya wasn't able to catch what it had shown. She hopped up onto the wall and kicked off her sandals. When you weren't used to them, geta were absolutely killer. Fu pulled herself up next to her.

They sat together in silence, Tayuya trying to help simply by being there. And she knew from experience that it _did_ help.

"Did you mean it?" Fu whispered. Tayuya almost missed it, it was spoken so softly.

What was she talking about? She tried to think back to the last thing she had said that would match up with the girl's question. Oh. Right. Being a better person.

"Yeah, you're totally better than them." _Fu_ didn't go around actively terrorizing people.

"No, about being friends." Fu's voice was still flat, but it was a calmer flat now.

"Well, I'd like to think so." she said in reassurance. Tayuya turned to the girl next to her. "Is that not okay? Sorry if I'm going too fast. We've known each other for less than a week" A sniffle came from Fu's nose.

Fu wiped at her eyes and then shook her head, looking at the ground. Tayuya tried to get a good look at her face. Was she crying? Why was she crying? Had she said something wrong? Damn her mouth. It always got her in trouble.

"Was it something I said?" Fu gave a giggle and shook her head, and Tayuya's spirit rose. If she was feeling well enough to laugh, she had to be doing much better.

"No." she shook her head again. "Being friends is fine." she said quietly.

"Oh. Alright then." Her eyes cleared, and she looked up, staring at Tayuya with wet eyes.

Tayuya was a bit uncomfortable at that, and turned away to avoid her eyes.

They just sat there for a while, enjoying the company, watching the people thrum in the business of the festival down below.

Fu broke the silence again. "Even if I'm actually a monster?" she whispered.

What? Oh. Jeez. This girl had some serious issues. Not that Tayuya could point any fingers.

"Yeah. Even if you're a monster." _And even if I don't exactly know what that means._

Fu laid back on the grass, becoming still. Her breathing slowly evened out. Tayuya looked over at her face, trying to gauge the girl's current mental state, and was surprised to see her eyes open. She'd thought that she'd fallen asleep. Fu's eyes flicked over in her direction, and Tayuya looked away, embarrassed she had been caught staring.

"Thank you." It was so softly spoken, it almost drifted on the wind.

But Tayuya had heard it.

And that was what mattered.

* * *

><p>The word '<em>monster<em>' continuously echoed through Fu's head, even now, nearly an hour later. The voice. The tone. The same sound.

She'd never thought she'd run into him again. She had avoided that area of the village like it was infested by a plague. But apparently, he had sought her out. Found her. Accosted her. Insulted her. All from the relative safety granted by acting as a part of the group.

Her _father_.

She thought she'd react in anger, lashing out at him for all the pains he had caused in her life along with her mother. She thought she would explode, unable to contain her righteous disdain and fury.

Instead, she had froze.

Stuck in the body of a six-year-old.

Living her memories all over again.

* * *

><p><strong>9 years ago<strong>

"Your daughter-"

"Don't! you _say_ that. That _thing_ is not our daughter." the voice was filled with venom in a way she had never heard before. It scared her, and Fu struggled to repress a whimper from her hiding spot.

Her father and mother hadn't talked to her ever since she got the really painful tattoo on her chest last week that gave her more of that 'chakra' stuff that the ninja-men had told her about. Her hair and eyes had changed colors, and she thought they looked pretty now. But whenever she said anything to her parents, they wouldn't look at her anymore.

The shinobi man sighed.

"Nevertheless, she killed a child today." his voice was grim. "We weren't anticipating her body adapting so rapidly."

She froze behind the door. Killed? What did he mean? How could she have killed him? She'd only hit the other boy in the face like he'd been doing to her. Roughhousing didn't kill anyone. She'd tussled with other kids for years now. She couldn't have killed him. He _had_ stopped after she hit him once. But that was normal for her. Apparently she hit like a boy.

"His neck was snapped at one of the cervical vertebrae. Instant death. It was painless."

"It must have been feeling _merciful_." the cold voice didn't sound nice.

She couldn't have killed him. She'd only hit him. She had to tell them. Had to make sure they knew that. It couldn't have been her fault. She ran into the room, unable to keep listening from the crack in the door.

"Daddy! I only hit him once! I'm sorry!" She ran over to him, sobbing.

Neither of her parents turned to her, not even acknowledging her very presence. His eyes were like cold glass, not full of warmth like they had been last week.

"Mommy! I promise I didn't mean to! I'm sorry! I'll try harder!" She didn't even know what she was supposed to try harder _at_, but she just wanted them to look at her, to see her. Nothing moved their gaze from the other man.

She reached out for her father's pant leg, trying to get his attention. She tugged it, and he recoiled, slapping her across the face with the back of his hand. She fell to the ground backwards, silently gasping in shock from the pain that spread across her face.

His eyes finally turned in her direction. But they were completely empty, and refused to focus on her.

"Don't touch me you _monster_. How could you pretend to be our daughter!? How you could kill her, and then act like her _sickens_ me. It's inhumane. You _are_ a demon."

The shinobi man interrupted "We're offering to train her to better control herself."

"Take it. We don't want anything to do with it. We'll be warning the others."

The ninja man had sighed again, but agreed.

Everything happened in a whirlwind. The shinobi man went upstairs, and come back down with a suitcase. He picked her up from where Fu was still sitting on the rug, tears running down her face, and taken her to a large concrete facility, putting her in a sparsely decorated room. She had never seen the man again.

It was the beginning of the rest of her life.

* * *

><p>Fu yanked herself away from the memory. Again. For the <em>third<em> time.

The training had been extremely harsh and almost impossible. But she came out of it able to grasp a glass of water without having it shatter, and able to punch a 4 foot crater into solid stone at the age of nine. Years later, she was now able to handle delicate objects without thinking about it. But it had been very difficult in the beginning.

For years, she wondered if it had been her fault. If there had been something she could have done. If something different would have changed the outcome. If she hadn't killed Daichi (as she later found out the boy's name had been), would it have changed how things turned out?

She eventually came to the conclusion that it wouldn't have mattered. Her parents had been looking for a monster, a demon, so they had seen one. She didn't know why. She _couldn't_ know why. It was incomprehensible and irrational. That they would go from loving parents to people who would abandon her. But as she learned, _people_ were incomprehensible and irrational.

Her parents were mentally unstable and insecure in some way, and had latched onto her new status as a bijuu-container as a way to feel relief from the pressure. It was cruel. And from their perspective, it was logical, sane, and completely justified. Even in spite of the things that the ninja had informed them before hand, when Fu had shown a high aptitude and potential for being Chomei's host.

There was nothing she could have done about it. They would have just used a different incident sooner or later. People always feared what they couldn't understand. And as her parents were civilians, this was something that seemed almost magical, and they jumped to conclusions, not allowing anyone else to dissuade them.

And because of them, the rest of the village had been 'warned'. Which mostly just involved her parents gossiping and telling stories.

How they had seen the light slipping from their girl's eyes during the sealing, only to be replaced with the gaze of a demon. How her hair and eyes had changed colors, from their original warm brown to the green and sharp orange, indicating the possession. How she had been emotionally distant immediately after the sealing, and how that was proof that the demon had been adjusting to the body, when in reality she had been in a great deal of pain. How she had killed the other boy without regrets, in cold blood, and how that showed how monstrous she was and that the demon would come after their blood, when she had simply not understood why the boy had stopped moving, thinking she had knocked him out.

It would have been impossible to make them happy. And so she had given up seeing them as parents, instead seeing them as people who were the source of all her troubles in the village, letting her natural rage fester and develop, which she had held onto for _years_.

Sado had gotten her to talk about them. Only a little. But it had still helped relieve some of the pressure. She had managed to let go of a great deal of anger towards them, but some still remained. She still got upset thinking about them. (Who wouldn't?) But now she mostly just pitied them and the majority of the village for being such simple, closed-minded fools.

Chomei wasn't even that bad. They talked a lot, and joked around, and were on really good terms, but most of the time he just slept in the seal. And _he'd_ never been outright mean or cruel to her.

Still, the villagers continued in their delusions, believing things like when she used insects she was controlling them to do evil things. It was truly pathetic.

They weren't worth her time.

* * *

><p>After another hour or so, Tayuya and Fu headed back into the festival. Tayuya led them back by her booth to get Fu a mask, thinking it might make things easier, and make her feel a bit more safe and secure. Fu picked out a traditional <em>Oni<em> mask, and put it on her head covering her face. Tayuya practically groaned. This girl's self-image was _terrible_. Maybe it was unconscious or something.

She really had to do something about that. Tayuya went around to the back of the stand where the extra stock was, and found a white wolf mask. Much better.

Holding it behind her back, she returned to the front of the booth, and faced Fu.

"I _really_ don't think that mask suits you." She reached up and gently lifted the oni mask off of Fu's face, allowing her to see the complete shock that was written across it. She set it to the side. "I think that this one is much better."

The other girl's eyes followed her hands as she brought the wolf mask from out behind her back, and raised it over Fu's head, pulling the string to the back and gently putting it in place.

"T-thanks."

"M-hm." She wanted to say something more though. "You can't let what they say get to you. Because that means they've won." Tayuya realized as she was saying it that she had done exactly that, and had almost been gotten into a fight.

"T-That may seem hypocritical, and you're supposedly pretty good at ignoring them, but something got to you tonight. And me. But mostly you. But-" Kami this was hard. This was _way_ out of her comfort zone. But Fu _really_ seemed like she needed the reassurance. "I-If you ever want to talk about it, I'm here."

The aura around the green-haired girl brightened a bit. "Th-thanks."

Once they left the stall, the nasty looks and glares stopped, as if magically, the mask doing its job of concealing Fu's identity. The two wandered around, just having fun, trying hard to forget the events in the alley. They played at a couple of the game booths, but didn't collect any of the prizes.

One thing they _did_ come across was a stall that was selling bracelets. As the pair passed by, Fu had stopped Tayuya, and gone back to the booth. She picked out two, and paid for them. She handed them back to the stall owner, and he took them, holding a half-ram handseal, which made Tayuya mildly interested. When Fu came back to Tayuya's side in the middle of the street, she explained it.

"They're chakra linked bracelets, always pointing in the direction of the other one." she fell quiet for a moment before continuing. Tayuya was slightly annoyed at the mask now, as it kept her from seeing the other girl's face and expressions. "I-It's kind of a... c-couple's thing". Tayuya saw Fu's neck turning red.

"B-But! I figured it was only fair, since I can find you anywhere anyways. Now you'll just be able to do the same." Oh. That _was_ useful. Especially considering if she had found the other girl earlier than she had tonight, the entire debacle might have been avoided.

Tayuya took the one that the other girl offered, a light green with leafy designs and a few beetles, putting it on her wrist, and sure enough, it swung around her wrist so that the largest leaf was pointing in the direction of the other bracelet. She looked over at Fu's. It was red, and were those...

"Peppers? What kind of significance does that have? I mean, I get the beetles cause you're all into insects and can talk to them, but chili peppers?"

Fu stalled in the middle of putting hers on.

"Y-you smell like paprika... a-and sea salt" Fu said, her voice low. "It's nice. Pleasant."

Huh. "Thanks, I guess." She'd never been complimented on how she'd smelled before. Not that she _minded_. She just hadn't been expecting it.

"What does that mean? Those two smells?" Tayuya's curiosity demanded that she ask.

"I-I don't really know. I've never come across anybody else with either of them." Fu replied. So she was unique? And in two ways apparently. Her ego inflated a bit.

They ended up drifting around the festival a bit more, enjoying the energy that saturated the air. As the festival wound down for the night, Tayuya led them back to the mask booth.

"So, uh, Yoshida wanted me to stick around to help him pack up the stand for tonight, and there's not as much boxes and stuff, so I guess we'll have to call it a night here."

Fu nodded as they walked around to the front of the stand. "Alright! I-I had a lot of fun..."

Tayuya smiled. "Yeah, me too."

"Um, I'll see you tomorrow." Fu almost looked like she was going to do something, but halted herself and tensed up.

And then she disappeared, leaving Tayuya wondering what exactly _that_ had been about.

* * *

><p>Fu took a few hours to clear her head from the fuzziness that the redhead seemed to induce. Something was happening to her. She had almost kissed Tayuya on the cheek at the end there. She had managed to quash the impulse, but part of her mind had been screaming at her for it. This was not comfortable. She wanted answers. And Chomei seemed to have some kind of idea what was going on.<p>

She dove into her mindscape, fully intent on getting something out of this. She didn't _need_ to visit him to communicate, but she wanted to see him. It was a lot easier having a conversation with him when she could read his body language.

The stone fortress seemed to flow around her as she moved towards the area where he was.

"Choomeeiiii!"

She walked down the stairs, following the pipes that mirrored her chakra network into the room that represented her seal.

"Chomeeeeiiiiiii!"

The giant kabutomushi almost seemed to be expecting her. That was fairly unusual.

**"Yes?"** He lounged at the edge of her seal, right at the corner closest to her, and she walked right up to him.

"What the hell is happening to me!? I almost kissed her!"

**"I know. I was watching."** His voice carried an undertone of extreme amusement.

"Wha- Why were you watching!?" She was slightly mortified at that. What exactly had he seen? And he felt her impulses?

**"It is the first entertainment I have gotten in decades. You can not blame me for wanting to enjoy it."**

"My life is not some, some TV show!" she shouted angrily.

**"Indeed. It is better."** He sounded smug at that. She obviously wasn't going to win this one.

"Whatever." She'd ignore his platonic-voyeuristic tendencies for now. "Do you have any clue what the hell is going on?"

**"Of course."** What? Just like that? She waited for a few seconds.

"Well? What is it?"

**"Oh, I can't just **_**tell**_** you. That would ruin half the fun."**

"What!? Chomei! This is important! What's going on with me!?"

The beetle looked in thought for a moment. **"Perhaps I can simply give you a clue."** He nodded. **"Yes. That will work."** He lowered his helmet-visor down to her level. **"Why do you think you're so much more sensitive to her scent than to all the others? Why does it affect you the way it does? I can tell you that it is not because of **_**her**_**."**

That was a _really_ good question. Why was Fu so sensitive to it? And Chomei seemed to be implying that nobody else would find it as tantalizing. Even if her beetles seemed to enjoy it, they didn't react half as much to the soothing scent as she did. But she still didn't get it.

Chomei sighed. The girl obviously was not understanding his implications. **"In nature, what draws two insects to each other?"**

She replied instinctively "Their phere-" Oh no. Kami no. She was not _attracted_ to Tayuya. Yes, the redhead was physically attractive, and she seemed to be a good person, but! She did not want to _mate_ with her. She suppressed that thought at feeling her face heat up to sun-burn levels.

No way in _hell_. They were both girls!

And Chomei seemed to be implying that since she had _always_ been reacting to the girl's scent like that, Fu had been interested in her from the very start. She reigned her slight anger at feeling like the situation was out of her control, and tried to focus on _why_ it seemed to be happening.

"So... what? Is this some animalistic thing? Is this part of being a jinchuriki? My body decides these things on its own?" That had _not_ been in the metaphorical brochure.

**"Not... exactly. My hosts tend simply to react more comfortably to the scents of people with similar personalities. It is not a condemnation. Nor is it an assurance. It simply indicates that you are compatible people who are likely to get along. It does not control you, nor does it push you do to things that are against your will."**

So... he was saying that at some level, she _wanted_ this? Fu fell back on the stone floor, and splayed her limbs out, just trying to think.

She definitely hadn't _felt_ manipulated by the scent. It had just been warm and fuzzy and given her a feeling of security, making her want to open up and let the girl in (which she had, tonight). But that was the dangerous thing about instincts that you couldn't control: they could do things to your mind without you even noticing.

She really _didn't_ want to think about the possibility that she had been looking at Tayuya as a potential romantic interest all along. It felt... uncomfortable. Like she had been deceiving the girl with her actions in becoming a friend.

But Chomei had never lied to her before. And he didn't seem to have a reason now, either.

"So it was all me? _I_ was the one who pushed things in that direction?"

The large beetle shifted uncomfortably, and Fu almost laughed at the imagery combined with the frustrating situation.

**"There were probably a number of factors. It is not just you. It is not just her. You cannot place the blame with any one party. Your history, and need for a companion most likely realized itself in you reaching out for her in a stronger way than you had intended. But I truly do not know. Matters of the human heart are beyond my comprehension."**

That had some merit, though. Even if the kabutomushi didn't like becoming involved in discussions of human interaction and philosophy, he still could see things logically.

Her history _did_ indicate a distinct lack of human presence. Was it really that simple? She had just been looking for someone else, and latched strongly onto the first person she had come across?

"But, we're both girls!"

**"I... I am afraid I do not understand the significance of that."**

"That's not how it's supposed to work. It's supposed to be a guy and a girl! Not two girls!"

**"Ah. I see. You are concerned because you are sexually identical, and thus have do not have the ability to produce offspring."**

Fu felt her face heat up again. "No! I mean, yes. But no!"

**"I'm afraid that matters of human sexuality are also beyond me. While we bijuu have gender, we do not suffer from physical directives that push us towards mating and reproduction. We are simply masses of sapient chakra. If it is not a concern of physical compatibility, why does it matter the gender? I do not understand why the fact that you are both female is of any significance."**

Fu paused. Why _was_ that bothering her so much? Why was it an issue if she was attracted to girls? Maybe because of the thought that if it had been a guy instead of Tayuya she would have been just as attracted to him? Or had she always been interested in girls, which was why she had never even _considered_ Sado in that way? Sado was like her brother. They hadn't always been like that, but that's what it felt like now. Had she immediately pushed him into that role because of her lack of feelings towards him in any other form? Urgh. It was not fun self-diagnosing your psychological issues.

She cradled her head in frustration. "What should I doooo?"

She wasn't really expecting a reply, and was caught off-guard when Chomei responded.

**"Is there anything that **_**can**_** be done? You appear rather attached to each other by now. Creating a distance would only serve to raise her suspicion, and make things more difficult, for both of you."**

Yeah. And she really liked Tayuya. No matter if she was attracted to her or not (she _totally_ was), she didn't want to break off the first connection she had made with a person in _years_ just because she was afraid of it becoming romantic.

Is that where the problem lay? Was she afraid of being abandoned again? Tonight had raised some serious questions as to whether she had lingering, unresolved issues with her parents. Was she afraid that if she gave someone her heart again, they would just break it beyond all recognition?

There was no changing the facts, now that she could see what was going on. She was interested in the other girl. Is this what a crush felt like? It did _not_ help that Fu saw the redhead every day now. That only made things worse.

Her poor, shriveled heart was unused to _feeling_ so much, and she was slightly afraid she would get swept up in her emotions and end up doing something stupid that only served to push Tayuya away. And Fu didn't know if she'd be able to handle not ever seeing her again.

Oh gods. She had it _bad_, didn't she?

She rolled around on the ground in front of Chomei while he watched on in curiosity. Why did her life have to get so _complicated_? She wasn't blaming Tayuya, or regretting that she was getting to know her. But this just really threw a wrench into the whole "Hey! Let's be good friends!" thing they had going on. Arrghh.

She'd just have to deal with it a day at a time. Not to mention Tayuya _still_ seemed to have no clue about Chomei. That was a whole different problem in itself. Fu stopped rolling as she recognized that this conversation had been the _second_ time recently that Chomei had mentioned the other tailed beasts. And now was the perfect opportunity to question him. She ignored the part of her mind that said she was only doing this to distract herself from the real issue of Tayuya.

"Chomei. You keep talking about the tailed beasts. You were so tight-lipped before" She ignored for the moment that he didn't actually _have_ lips. "What changed?"

Chomei stepped around inside the stone triangle, before standing still and seeming to grow weary.

**"We have lost contact with Kokuo."**

She didn't recognize the name. "Who?"

**"The five-tails. He blessed his host with the Boil Release, an elemental recomposition of Fire and Water. His latest host, Han, was supposedly very skilled. Very powerful based on what Kokuo had been saying before. Similar to you in combat style."**

She was almost afraid to ask. "A-And what happened to them?"

**"We do not know. But it seems like Kokuo may have been forcibly removed from his host and sealed into some object that cuts off all contact with the outside world."** He brought his large face down within in inches of hers.

**"A forced extraction from our host is one of the most painful, agonizing things that can be experienced. To both the host, and the bijuu. And it always results in the previous host's death, as your chakra has adapted and become dependent on ours, giving rise to your abilities, but ultimately leaving your chakra network collapsing if we are not present."** He moved his head away to give her some room.

That did not sound like something she wanted to have a first-hand experience of anytime soon. Great. So there was someone out there that could take down a skilled, experienced jinchuriki like he was saying this Han was. That was not good.

**"This is yet another reason to continue associating with the other girl. She seems to only have your best interests in mind, and is a skilled combatant, despite her weakness in the areas you excel. That is actually for the best, as you balance each other well. And she is progressing with her chakra manipulation at a rate I have not seen since my creation."** His voice grew distant at that, as if he was remembering something, but then he came back. **"Did you take notice that she created **_**ice**_** in the alleyway where you were accosted?"** Fu had seen the slight sheen of _something_ as they left, but she hadn't thought anything of it.

**"She does not have the genetic disposition to meld those two elements, and yet she is still able to do it instinctively in periods of stress. It is perplexing. If she is able continue advancing at her current rate, she could become an even more powerful ally."**

"So, what do we do? What can _I_ do?"

He stopped at that, thinking for a moment. **"We are not aware of how this happened, or who or what caused it. Acting on incomplete information would be rash and unwise. Perhaps if we were able to gather the other jinchuriki, there would be safety in numbers. Or it might lead to our demise all the quicker. But out of all of the bijuu, I am perhaps the only one who has discussed this with my host."**

Fu was taken aback at that, and must have shown it.

**"Is it really so surprising? We share one of the strongest and most amicable bonds of all the jinchuriki, Gyuki and his host being the other."** Fu was further stunned at that.

**"I know that there is no way for you to unlock the seal, so why should I act as though it is your fault? It is not. If anything, I cannot understand why you are not more resentful and hateful of me, as the majority of pain and suffering in your life is directly attributable to my being sealed inside of you."**

Maybe she had been in the beginning, but she'd come to realize that he was as much a victim of circumstance as she was. In fact, it had probably been worse for him, as he had been free, and then was captured, traded around the shinobi nations like a commodity and weapon.

**"No. I prefer to make the most of this mutually undesirable situation. And that includes maintaining a good relationship with my host, of which you have been my favorite and most entertaining by far.**

**"To answer your question, the best thing we can do is simply prepare. Continue training. Work with the other girl. Be ready for anything."**

"A-Alright." Her mind couldn't think of anything more at that point.

Fu exited the her mindscape in a daze, and just stared at her ceiling, trying to process the things she had learned. Why was her life getting so hard _now_? First Tayuya, and her sudden realization of her latent romantic interest in the girl, and now a possible threat that could end up killing her.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**  
>You got drama! I promised, didn't I?<p>

Young Fu is so cute. Imagining her running around the playground was a great.

Whenever I write Chomei, I always imagine this really deep voice going "我々は..." (Wareware wa) at the start of sentences. It makes me giggle.

Odd thing I learned:  
>The Japanese voice actor for Chomei (Kenichi Suzumura) is also Shiki Tohno in Tsukihime (the bad anime adaptation, not the VN), one of my absolute favorite stories. And Myoe in Kyousogiga. And he was Zack in all the FFVII things. He's pretty cool.<p>

Yes. Fu is mildly OP, _at close quarters_. She's technically S-rank in it. Everything else she's about B-rank. I guess you'll just have to wait and see where that goes.

As always, read! review! follow! (if you're mildly interested.)

ensou

* * *

><p><strong>Translations:<strong>  
><em>Geta<em>: traditional Japanese wooden sandals worn when wearing kimono (such as during festivals). Jiraiya wears them all the time, as he seems to think it enhances his 'sage' image and kabuki introduction. They're an absolute killer on your arches if you're not used to them.  
><em>Oni<em>: A Japanese demon, popular in myths and legends.


	7. Promises

It's only been a little less than a month and a half since I started posting this. This is my first story (it probably shows), and it's a bit off of the beaten path for a Naruto fic. But somehow, it's gotten over 500 visitors and _1300_ views, which blows me away.

So to those of you who read this story, who enjoy it, and especially those who tell me they do, I want to thank you.

We've still got a ways to go.

**Disclaimer:** Did characters of Naruto ever have meaningful, constructive conversations about their deep-seated issues where things were resolved _without_ battle? (I'm looking at you, Gaara. And Obito. And Sasuke.) If not I don't own Naruto, nor any of the associated universe.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 7:<strong>  
><strong>Promises<strong>

Tayuya hadn't expected to continue to working for Yamada after the festival, but he said that she was the best help he'd had in years, and since he had enough money, and nothing to do with it, she was welcome to continue working for him.

Their materials switched from wood to porcelain, and he began teaching her the basics of what went into the masks that the ANBU used. Things like how to make the special super-hydrophobic glaze and enamel used to ensure that the masks were completely waterproof. And how the inside was coated so that they would stay on the face properly (a weird chakra-reactive coating that left no residue on the skin).

Fu slowly seemed to loosen up again a couple days after the festival, and they resumed eating lunch together. But she always seemed to be a little bit on edge around Tayuya, and the redhead assumed it was because the other girl was unused to such constant close contact with another person. Not that Tayuya was any more experienced.

Tayuya was slow in improving her taijutsu, but had made leaps and bounds with her chakra manipulation. She could now create and maintain a few of those circular wind blades on various points of her body.

Shin had told her in a letter after that that she had reached the furthest point of the exercises he knew of. So she started improvising, working on things she found difficult. That had led to some... interesting (i.e. dangerous) experiments. She was now focusing on being able to pass the blades between arbitrary positions on her body. And that was _not_ easy. She still didn't have it down after two weeks, as each tenketsu needed to be worked. It was very time-consuming. Unlike the previous exercises, she got the feeling that this one would take her months to get down.

Another thing Tayuya had found (accidentally!) was that her healing was nearly universal. Receiving cuts from trying to pass the chakrams and needing to dodge had become common. Every time she was somehow injured, it was now closing up in seconds. Even the one time she almost cut her arm completely off. She was _really_ glad Fu hadn't been there for that.

There was little progress with the imitation Ice Release, which had involved her trying to freeze a cup of water. She was working with the assumption that Ice was formed by Water providing the 'base' and Wind providing a 'modification'. She had _thought_ that If she already had the water, it would be easier. It really wasn't. After a week of frustration and wanting to pull her hair out, she'd swallowed her pride and taken Fu's suggestion to do some research at the library.

She found nothing on mixing chakra elements (which wasn't at all surprising in the civilian section), so she had instead tried looking up how it worked naturally. It had been... enlightening. Going from a liquid to a solid at room temperature required a great deal more energy in cooling than going from a gas to a liquid.

Which had lead her to her current experiments: attempting to draw water from the air. Not with the Water element, which she could do already, but with only her Wind element, by cooling the surrounding area (acting as some sort of human dehumidifier).

It was a _lot_ harder than she had expected, and she had taken to attempting it whenever she could spare a little bit of focus. It made her clothes damp from the cloud of water vapor, but that was the only real side effect. Fu had laughed at her one morning after doing it their entire session because she looked like 'a drowned cat'.

Unlike Tayuya, Fu wasn't really trying to learn anything new, other than the hard taijutsu style, which was a matter of practice, and not exactly something she could rush through.

Tayuya was growing very fond of the green-haired girl. She had become rather protective of Fu. Not in a physical sense, because Fu could more than deal with anybody in that way, but more just acting as an emotional pillar, a support. They'd discussed a bit of Fu's past a few times, but she never pushed for it, and let the girl bring it up on her own. Being that considerate was a very new experience for her.

Every so often she had caught the green-haired girl looking at her when she thought Tayuya wouldn't notice, especially recently, and she wondered what it was about. It didn't _bother_ her. It just... made her curious.

* * *

><p>The days immediately after the festival, Fu had been hyper-aware of the redhead. She had almost skipped their morning training because the anxiety she felt towards facing the other girl after her unnerving revelations.<p>

It hadn't been easy.

Being aware that you subconsciously viewed another person as a romantic interest, and then having it brought to light didn't exactly help when you saw them every day.

Their dynamic had changed following when she had talked about her parents, and Fu noticed Tayuya was making concerted effort to be open and understanding, but trying to do it in such a way that Fu wouldn't be offended. She truly appreciated that.

They always ate lunch with each other, Tayuya preparing two bentous everyday, with exacting precision. But it wasn't a sterile precision like a hospital. Rather, there was a sense of care and effort placed into them that made Fu feel safe . And she knew that this was one of the ways Tayuya could show how much she cared without saying it out loud. It wasn't a simple thing to make lunch for two people everyday before six. And she never complained about having to wash the boxes.

Their discussions had brought more and more of the redhead's history and personality to light. But Fu couldn't easily connect the rash, arrogant girl that she was told about with the figure in front of her. It was both a contradiction and not. She could see remnants and hints lurking about, but they almost never surfaced around Fu. Instead, Tayuya was humble, fully aware of her limitations in areas such as taijutsu. But she also refused to give up. Her focus and dedication to something she strove to accomplish was like a finely honed blade. And when she succeeded, the happiness and sense of accomplishment she expressed was well-deserved.

Fu always got caught up in what the other girl felt. Whenever Tayuya smiled, Fu felt a warmth blossom inside her chest. But at the same time, every time she moved, every time she talked, every time she looked at her, Fu wanted to run away. To escape. To withdraw. To deny it.

How she was constantly aware of the girl's position relative to her. How her eyes were drawn to her face, constantly noticing how it moved fluidly between emotions. Happiness. Frustration. Excitement. Annoyance. It was like watching the phases of the moon.

She had never realized before that Tayuya's eyes weren't black. They were brown. But it was a shade so dark, that under the shadow of the redhead's bangs, they looked like pitch. Both her nose and mouth were small, but it matched her facial structure well. Her lips were always in motion. Pursed when she was working. Bitten when she was troubled. Frowning when she was unsatisfied. Slightly smiling whenever she talked to Fu, only the very edges turned up.

_How had she never noticed?_

Tayuya was beautiful. Not just subjectively, either. Fu had seen the appreciative looks directed towards the redhead when they had been walking around the festival.

She had a deceptively delicate figure. In retrospect, Tayuya in her yukata seemed almost other-worldly, like she had stepped out of a painting.

After the fifth day of struggling and fighting for control with her emotions, she had given up. She wouldn't have been able to keep it up for another week, at the longest. It had been a losing battle.

But with that surrender, a sense of calm had settled on her. She wondered if Tayuya had even noticed.

Now, whenever they said goodbye in the morning, there was always a twinge of longing and sadness in her chest. Even when she knew they were only going to be apart for few hours. There was a feeling of loss and emptiness, that was only repaired and filled by being in the presence of the other girl.

And whenever she saw the redhead again, she was always struck by how _beautiful_ Tayuya was. A sense of lightness and raw elation filled her chest, and she couldn't help but express it, even if it was only in minuscule amounts so as not to draw attention. It was all she could do to try and keep from being overwhelmed by the tsunami of emotions that were building up and cascading within her.

Fu didn't really know what she was feeling. Was this a crush? Or was this love? She hadn't _ever_ felt anything like this or this strongly before, and so she had no basis for comparison.

And she hadn't even noticed when it truly began. It had creeped up on her. But two weeks after the festival, she had been sure of it. It was undeniable. Only a two weeks after Tayuya had solidified their friendship, and she was enthralled.

When she had come to that conclusion, it brought forth a whole new wave of insecurity. What did Tayuya think of her? Obviously, as friends of some sort. But was that the full extent? What did Tayuya think of their relationship? How did she view it?

Fu had become extremely self-critical, always thinking about how she was acting in front of the redhead. She worried about how the other girl saw her. As someone who needed protection? Who needed care? As a teacher? As an adult or a child? A potential romantic interest? Not knowing drove her anxiety to record highs.

She had had to stop thinking about it, for her sanity's sake. Otherwise, she would be obsessing over it constantly. Still, it cropped up every so often.

But why did she feel like this?

Was it Tayuya's speech? The small laugh she gave when she was amused? How she was completely blunt, and genuine to a fault? How despite her obvious discomfort and inexperience, she tried to be as available and accepting as possible? Or was it something baser, like her appearance, her body? Fu hoped she wasn't so shallow that it was only that.

She had caught herself fantasizing in daydreams more than a few times. About what it would feel like to be held by her. To be hugged. To be embraced. She wondered what Tayuya's lips tasted like. Were they that same paprika and sea salt? Or were they something different?

Her dreams had become filled with images of the girl. Some were platonic. And others were most definitely _not_. Being fifteen years old and hormonal was not helping in that regard. Tayuya had lit some spark within her that had grown into a wildfire, and Fu had consoled herself in solitude more than once with thoughts of the redhead.

It felt so _right_ being around her. Fu reveled in that and the warmth she felt, but the sensation was always slightly tinged and soured by the whispered worries at the back of her mind. What would happen if Tayuya found out about Chomei? What would happen _when_ she found out? It wasn't a matter of possibility, but of time. And what if she found out how Fu felt about her, only to be disgusted and judgmental?

Whenever Fu considered Tayuya's reaction, her mind immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion: that Tayuya would leave, and she would be left all alone. Just like before. Just like her parents. At that, her veins felt like they were frozen, glacial water trickling through them. Her spine became an icicle. But her chest felt like it was hollow. The first time she had fixated on it, her worry and anxiety had been bad enough to make her hyperventilate, petrified until she had managed to break her mind away from the topic with sheer willpower.

She truly didn't know if she could ever return to the time before Tayuya came into her life.

* * *

><p><em>(One month after the festival)<em>

"She _still_ doesn't know?"

Fu shook her head.

They sat in Sado's living room, since his apartment actually _had_ a living room. Fu was sitting on the couch, and Sado was on a simple squarish leather chair that looked deceptively uncomfortable. It actually felt like a cloud.

It was mid-afternoon, and she had come to visit Sado since she felt bad about almost neglecting him for the past few weeks. She had still gotten groceries, but they hadn't really talked at all.

"So why don't you tell her? You know that, sooner or later, she's going to find out anyways. And with the fact that the entire village knows, I wouldn't bet on later. I'm honestly surprised it's even lasted this long. It's been what? A month and a half now? " He asked.

Fu buried her face in her arms, which were crossed on the coffee table in front of her. "I know, I know. I keep putting it off. Whenever I'm around her, I'm afraid if I tell her, she'll just... leave. I don't want to have to face her after she finds out."

Sado gave her a pitying look. "She wouldn't do that. At least not based on what you've told me. Isn't that what you believe?"

Fu jerked her head off of the table."Yes, here!" Fu motioned at her head. "But not here!" She jabbed her chest, right over her heart.

It wasn't a matter of logic. _Logically_, based on past and current evidence, and what she'd said herself, Tayuya wouldn't care. It would be a shock, sure, but at the end of the day they'd be fine. Her poor, damaged _heart_, on the other hand didn't understand that.

Her parents' betrayal had broken and scarred her on a level she hadn't even realized until recently. And she rebelled against ever considering trusting anyone that much again. And her relationship and trust with Sado had been built over _years_. It had been slow, hard work.

She'd only known Tayuya for a little over a month. And her feelings towards the girl were also _much_ more powerful than anything she had ever experienced.

"If she hates me, I don't think I could handle it." Fu said, melancholic. She lifted herself up, drew her knees against her chest, and hugged her legs. If Tayuya actually abandoned her, Fu felt she might truly shatter. And nothing would be able to put her back.

She chuckled darkly under her breath at the irony. Taki's greatest weapon, broken at the hands of a seventeen year old girl. And the redhead didn't even have to do anything for that to come true.

Sado frowned. "Now you're just being melodramatic. It wouldn't be that bad. Losing a friend is hard, but you'll get through it." Fu wanted to laugh. No, she had a feeling this would be the proverbial drop that caused the dam to break. It was less of a drop and more of a lake though.

Fu shook her head. "No. You don't understand."

"I don't understand what? I think I've got a pretty good grasp on the situation." He responded, slightly confused.

"Sado, I like her."

"Well, yeah, you guys are practically connected at the hip. I'd think that would be a requirement." He made it sound so innocent. And her thoughts recently had been anything _but_.

"No. Not like that." Fu hugged herself tighter. "I think I'm falling in love with her." she whispered, as if afraid saying it out loud would make it all the more true.

Sado blinked. "Oh. Is she aware of how you feel?" Fu almost started coughing.

"No. I don't think she's noticed. She's kind of oblivious. And I haven't said anything." she answered. Just another thing to worry about.

"Well that really complicates things, huh?"

"Yeah." she agreed, sighing. "And what if she's fine with Chomei, but doesn't accept me?" she asked rhetorically.

Fu had an impossible hope that Tayuya might grow to feel the same way, but she knew the chances of that happening were definitely _not_ in her favor. Having her feelings remain unrequited would be extremely painful, but her only option would be to suppress them because of how much she valued having the redhead as a friend.

Sado sat thinking for a moment before he responded. "I think you need to tell her about Chomei first. It would be a good test of how committed and open she is." She opened her mouth to respond, but he held up a hand, cutting her off. "If she takes that information well, you can start talking about her own feelings towards you once she's come to terms with your status as a jinchuriki. If you try and tell her both at the same time, you're going to overwhelm her. She'd probably withdraw in order to try and process, and she won't be thinking as clearly about either."

She knew he was right. It was the same conclusion she had come to. But she hadn't wanted to recognize it.

_'Chomei, what do you think? I know you've been awake this entire time.'_

'**What you decide to do with the flame-haired girl is of no concern to me, I have already given you counsel on the matter.**'

_'Come on, you know how important this is to me.'_ She heard a large sigh.

'**I think the experienced one's plan has merit. But ultimately, the decision lies with you.**' She heard Chomei shift around. He was going back to sleep now that he'd said his piece.

The worst that could happen was that everything would go back to how it was before Tayuya had stumbled into her life. Except with her heart in a million tiny pieces. Yeah. _Real_ positive thoughts. She shook her head.

"Alright then. Chomei first." She was happy that she had reached some conclusion. With her acceptance of the only possible path, she felt some of the metaphorical weight lift from her mind.

"Get it over with soon. The longer you put it off, the harder it's going to get." She nodded automatically at Sado, already trying to think of when she would try and talk to the redhead.

She didn't know if she could take the stress of waiting very long, now that the issue had been aired and decided. Maybe as soon as she got off of work. No. Maybe she could ask Tayuya if they could do dinner tonight. That would be better.

"Fu."

She looked at Sado. "What?"

"Just, if something happens, and you don't know what to do? I'm here. I don't want to be worrying about you." She almost brushed him off, but caught the sincerity in his eyes.

"Thank you. Really."

"You've grown up so much since I first saw you. It makes me proud." He smiled. "Be careful, okay?"

"I will." she said to him, glad to have made such a good ally.

* * *

><p>Fu put her chopsticks down on the wooden table, and tried to stop her fingers from fidgeting too much. Now was the best time. She had to do it. She was so scared. But. She really couldn't continue with the lies of omission. Each day for the past week her guilt and anxiety had grown more and more in the back of her mind.<p>

"I have something to tell you."

The room became deathly quiet. Fu could actually hear the breeze blowing outside. The atmosphere was stifling.

Tayuya, sensing that this was something fairly serious, set her cup of tea down.

"Alright." She eyed the green-haired girl, and Fu suppressed her instinct to shrink away from the girl. "You aren't... like, dying or something, right?" What?

"Pffttt" Fu couldn't stop herself from giggling at how absurd the question was. It was completely unexpected. And just like that, the tension was gone. She really loved Tayuya. It was things like this that made her so fun to be around.

"What? It's a serious question!" Tayuya seemed to be completely honest, and that just made it funnier. But Fu managed to stop herself.

"No, no. I'm not dying." How had she come to _that_ leap in logic?

"Oh. Cause, the last time someone said that to me, they told me they were dying." That sobered Fu quickly. But the tight tension that had pervaded the room had still dissipated, and was no longer present.

"No. Nothing like that. I just... want to share something with you. That I thought you deserved to know." Yeah. That was a good way of putting it. They were close enough now that sharing secrets didn't seem odd.

She closed her eyes and her hands curled into fists under the table. It was better just to say it straight and get it over with, like ripping off a bandage.

"I... I am the host of the seven-tailed kabutomushi. I'm a jinchuriki."

Pieces in Tayuya's mind fell into place. Things that she had noticed. That she had picked up on, but hadn't pried into out of respect for Fu. Oh, there were still a few odd things out. But a large majority of the incongruities and questions she had about Fu were answered. But those answers only brought more questions to the front of her mind.

Now the monikers of 'demon' and 'monster' made sense. The villagers, and their ignorance about things like sealing. The spiteful hatred she had seen Fu endure, day after day. The pain she had seen in her face the day of the festival, in that dark alley.

Fu winced, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She opened one eye, and tried to see Tayuya's reaction. Her face held an expression of shock. But none of the hatred or fear that Fu had prepared for, had obsessed over.

"That... that. Fucking hell. That must _suck_." Tayuya shifted from shock to amazement. "Ho-How do you even _deal_ with something like that?" Fu didn't respond. Tayuya's mind jumped to the first question she could think of, and she couldn't stop herself from blurting out. "When?"

"Six. When I was six." Fu whispered, refusing to relax.

"And it's been like this ever since? This... village? The way they treat you?" Fu nodded. "And your parents?"

Fu's face seemed to lose even more color, but she refused to respond. The silence said everything.

"I-Is this what you meant when you talked about being a monster before?" She asked.

Fu laughed in self-depreciation. "Among other things. Are you going to leave now? Now that you know?" she asked anxiously.

And from that Tayuya _knew_ that Fu had thought she was going to abandon her. Like everyone else when they found out. Because that was all she had experienced. It made her thoughts halt in a dead stop. _No wonder she put off telling me._

Tayuya's chest ached and twisted to see the normally bright girl in such a state. Her throat felt dry, and her mouth like it was full of cotton . "N-No."

_Let's try that again, without the stuttering._

Tayuya took a sip from her cooling tea. "No, I'm not going anywhere." She held up the bracelet that perpetually adorned her right wrist and jangled it, causing it to swing around pointing at the mate on Fu's wrist. "Friends, remember?"

Fu laughed and sniffled, but nodded. Tayuya could see hints of moisture in the girl's eyes. She wished there was something she could do, but she wasn't exactly prepared or experienced with this sort of thing.

Fu took a breath, seeming to slowly accept that Tayuya wasn't going anywhere, but still very on edge. "The first week, I killed another kid by accident."

_Holy shit. When she was __**six**__?_

"I _literally_ didn't know my own strength. And according to records, I adapted much quicker to the foreign chakra than previous hosts. It was an accident. But it also set a bunch of things in motion."

Tayuya simply sat there, listening, as the other girl told her story, trying to get a better picture of what that must have been like.

"My hair and eyes used to be brown." Tayuya struggled to imagine it. It didn't seem... right. At all. The bright green and orange were like reflections of her personality. Anything else would be almost sacrilege in comparison.

"They changed because of the sealing. That was unprecedented. It had never happened before. And because of that, my _parents_" she spat the word venomously "reached the conclusion that my soul departed during the sealing. That I was now just a _demon_, in human skin, pretending to be their daughter. Secretly plotting against them and the village. That the boy was my first victim and was proof that I was out for blood. _Nothing_ could change their minds. They 'informed' the rest of the civilians. Kids grew up hearing stories about me. To them, I truly am a _'monster'_. A nightmare who only _looks_ like a girl."

That had to be terrible. No wonder she had so many issues with abandonment. Tayuya didn't know her parents, and hated them for feeling like they had just left her. But between having no memory of them, and having them discard you and be the reason you were vilified for the rest of your life? She'd easily choose no memory. That kind of psychological scarring didn't go away. Ever.

"Is that why you reacted like that in the alley? That name?"

Fu shook her head. "No. My _father_ was there. He was the one who said that." Holy fuck. "I _thought_ I was over it. I _thought_ I didn't care about them anymore. I was very, very wrong."

She laughed darkly again. Tayuya didn't like it. It sounded nothing like her other laugh. It was so wrong hearing it come from her.

"And you know the _really_ sad thing? It isn't even a demon. Chomei is _harmless_." Tayuya's eyebrows rose. She was on a first name basis with it? "Nobody takes the time to get to know their side of the story." Fu turned her head to Tayuya.

"Did you know, they were originally meant to live peacefully?" Tayuya shook her head. She'd never heard much about the tailed beasts except that they were huge, and ridiculously powerful. "Hashirama Senju, the founder of Konoha, _decided_ that they were too powerful for their own good. And distributed them between the nations like batteries, to be used as a deterrent for war." she snorted. "You can see how well _that_ worked."

Fu had learned about that from Chomei last week. They'd started talking more about the history of the bijuu, and about the Sage, their creator.

Fu stopped suddenly. "Sorry. That's not relevant."

Tayuya actually didn't mind. The last bits were pretty interesting.

"I-I want to show you something." Fu lifted up the bottom edge of her shirt and mesh carbon armor. At the base of her ribcage sat something that looked like a tattoo of an upside-down triangle made out of kanji. The sides spaced apart to make three gaps at the corners. The bottom gap pointed towards her navel, and Tayuya assumed that the other two pointed towards the girl's breasts. She felt herself heat up a little bit at that thought, and shook it from her head.

"This is the Three Walls Seal. It's what holds Chomei. It's designed to mix his chakra with mine, at a constant rate. And it's permanent. Impossible to remove. So even if I _wanted_ to let him go, I couldn't. Taki is very careful about their giant battery." She let her shirt and armor fall down.

"I-I know this is a lot to take in. But I just needed to tell you. To get it off my chest."

Tayuya nodded. It had been the same with her and Shin and Yomi. And this was no small confession. She had had the benefit of talking to virtual strangers, who she wasn't attached to. But Fu had become a close friend, and _then_ told her. She could see how that would be nerve-wracking

But now she knew why Fu had been so cautious. So _guarded_. Why she didn't have any other friends. Why she had become so attached so quickly to Tayuya. They had both needed someone to trust. Someone to talk to. Someone to share with.

Tayuya needed this relationship for the emotional support and connection. But she got that in the day-to-day things they did together. Just being close to someone.

Fu needed a lot more. She needed someone who would _stay_. Who would _care_. Who would be by her side _unconditionally_ and prove that her fears of abandonment were baseless.

It was more than a little daunting. Tayuya... wasn't sure if she could fill that role. But she also knew what would happen if she backed out at this point. Fu would be heartbroken. And with the emotional and psychological scarring she already had, it had the potential of pushing her past a breaking point. Tayuya could see that her friendship meant a _lot_ to the green haired girl if she was willing to go this far.

So she'd just have to try.

She hoped she could. For Fu's sake.

Tayuya debated whether she should tell Fu about her own seal. The other girl had just taken a tremendous leap of faith, blindly hoping against her conditioned fears and doubts that Tayuya wouldn't desert her. In comparison, her seal seemed trivial and minor. But it was the thought that counted, and it would distract Fu at the same time.

"I've got something to tell you too." she voiced.

Fu perked up a little at that. Tayuya was pleased that the girl seemed to be regaining a little of her color and normal demeanor.

"It's nothing like what you told me. But, it is something I've been keeping to myself."

Fu's expression became quizzical, but also worried.

"I'm pretty sure I know why I can heal. I told you how it was a recent thing. But there's something else."

She took a breath. What was the best way to start? Probably at the beginning.

"I died. I know I did. I was in a fight, I lost, and I died because I was on the wrong side."

Fu's mouth gaped. "B-But. You're here." Tayuya nodded.

"Somehow, I got a second chance. I don't know how. Or why. But I decided I was going to change. Completely."

It was Fu's turn to sit back and listen.

"Before that, I was sad, angry, and lonely. I kept everyone at arms reach, making sure that no would be able to hurt me. You know how I said I was Sound Ninja?" Fu nodded.

"I was one of Orochimaru's personal guards. Not just a member, but a fucking _elite_. And the cunt doesn't like letting his toys go."

Tayuya rolled her cup of now-cold tea between her hands.

"He was obsessed with the Uchiha clan. The bastard's main ambition was to 'learn all ninjutsu'. I didn't realize how fucking stupid that was until a few weeks ago. Ninjutsu are constantly being created. The Uchiha's Sharingan was supposed to let him do that. He became obsessed with the last Uchiha in Konoha. He applied a curse seal on the kid, to warp his mind. I had one too. Right here." She pulled back her neckline and pointed to the spot where it had been.

"It contains a number of things that screw you up." Tayuya counted them off on her fingers. "Ensure loyalty. Suppress higher-level thought. Sabotage logic and reasoning. All wrapped in a pretty package that was addicting to use, and gave you a hell of a boost in power. And impossible to remove, tangled in your chakra network."

She sighed.

"It gave me the worst fucking headaches afterwards. While it was on me, I was too fucked in the head to care. But I still avoided using the goddamn thing."

She tried to remember where in the story she was. _Oh, right._

"So _we_, his personal guards, the 'Sound Four' were sent to collect the fucking pansy, who couldn't even get to Rice on his own. We got into the shitty village. We told the kid we were there to take him back. We waited. He showed up. But _somebody_ fucked up, because Konoha found out. We weren't two hours out when we had to take a break from running. The kid was complete dead weight. He was sealed in a barrel, which is how you get the curse seal to advance stages. And then six brats show up. So one of us stays behind to deal with the goddamn runts.

"We keep going. They show up again, but one less. So we have another guy stay behind to deal with them. It was looking like we were getting shafted at that point. We were down to half the fucking team. Then they show up _again_. Except _this_ time, they're damn shadow clones. A real one pops up and traps me with his shadow. The kids get the barrel. But the last guy besides me takes one of the kids over a cliff with him. And then the Orochimaru's personal puppet shows up. You know clans and bloodlines, right?" Fu nodded. It was kind of a hobby of hers, being well informed.

"Kimimaro was a Kaguya with the Shikotsumyaku." The blood drained comically from the green-haired girl's face.

"Yeah. Exactly. He threatens me, tells me to kill the two brats. One of them slips past me. I get ready to fight. But something the asshole I'm going to fight says gets to me. He talked about trust.

"You have to understand, up until then I didn't trust _anyone_. Not even the fucking snake. I went with him because it was the best alternative to a shit life. So what the kid said got to me, before I could get ready to fight. Long story short, I acted like an arrogant bitch when I had the upper hand and let my emotions sabotage me. I had the bastard on the ropes. And I let my guard down. This chick from Sand with a giant fan shows up. Completely negates my genjutsu, and slices my flute up at the same time." Tayuya shook her head.

"That's what made me realize I was too goddamn dependent on my flute. If someone could take me out that easily, I was doing something wrong. One more move, and she slices the entire fucking forest to lumber, blowing them around like twigs."

She turned to look at Fu.

"I saw my life flashing in front of my eyes as those giant pieces of wood were flying at me. I _knew_ I wasn't going to live. There was no way. The last thing I remember from that is darkness. And then I just... woke up. Like nothing was fucking wrong. As if I had just fallen asleep for a few hours. Except my entire lower half had been smushed like a pancake." Fu wrinkled her nose at the imagery.

"So I'm stuck under these trees, and I try to use the curse seal to get out. Except it's just _gone_. Like it was never there. I started freaking out at that point. My mind wasn't used to not being pressured by the seal. So I start trying to fight off seven years of brainwashing and conditioning. That... was not fun."

Fu noticed that Tayuya had stopped cursing for the most part. Was it just a remnant of her past, linked to her time with Orochimaru? Is that why she had fluctuated between a calm and considerate, and abrasive and foul-mouthed? Because of her memories?

"After a few bad starts, I end up thinking that if I was out from under the snake's thumb, I should make the best of it and get going while the going was good. He would assume we all died, and I would get a new chance at life. Except I've still got these logs on my lap. So I decide to do it the old-fashioned way, and reinforce my limbs a bit in order to get them off. Nothing like what _you_ can do, but enough for a couple minutes.

"So I lift the logs off of my legs. And they're _gone_. Like, disintegrated. I could literally see my bone marrow and stuff." Fu looked a little green at that, and Tayuya became apologetic. "Ah, sorry. Being around the snake desensitizes you to that kind of shit. I always thought biology was cool. Anyways. A couple seconds pass, and my legs fly back together. Perfectly. Like nothing was wrong. I'm still in enemy territory, and I decide to deal with it later. So I run. From near the Valley of the End all the way to Se-shi. My pants were ripped so I got a new pair. And then I went looking for a place to stay."

Tayuya leaned back, holding herself up with her palms and looking up at the ceiling.

"I found this place. Run by Shin and Yomi. I've told you a bit about them. They dragged me inside, and put me up for the night. They knew I was a ninja from the start, but didn't call me out on it until the next day. I ended up spilling my guts. All the shit I had gone through with Orochimaru had taken its toll, I was just too brainwashed and proud to admit it. It was the first time I was able to talk to anyone else about how I felt. And they _listened_. You know how _good_ that feels?"

Fu nodded. She did. Sado did that for her. Tayuya looked at Fu.

"I felt _weightless_ after that. All the stuff that had been bothering me was suddenly not as much of a big deal. Shin helped me get my job here and taught me nature transformation , and Yomi's the one who got me cooking." Fu made a mental note to thank the woman as much as possible when she had the chance.

"The only weird thing was, the second day I was there, I found _this_."

Tayuya unzipped her red top half-way, and pulled down the stretchy materials that made up her mesh undershirt and breast wraps.

"It's some kind of seal. And it hadn't been there before I died. You know how I told you, whenever I heal, there's a minimal chakra drain?" Fu made an affirmative sound. "I'm pretty sure it's going here."

Fu leaned in to take a closer look. It looked strange. Like no other seal she'd ever seen. Not that she'd seen very many, but stiil. Shaped like a criss-crossed knot, with overlapping lines and hard right angles. It looked _completely_ solid until you got really close. And then she could make out smaller shapes. But their size was so tiny. And it felt out of place.

_'Chomei, have you ever seen anything like this?'_

**"Hm?"**

_'This seal on Tayuya's chest. It's... strange'_ Chomei took a moment to access her senses.

**"Never. I have not had the opportunity to understand the intricacies of human sealing, but it looks and feels almost unnatural."**

_'Yeah, that's the sense I get too. Unnatural.'_

Tayuya let her bindings and undershirt snap back into place, and then zipped her top up.

"Chomei and I think it's unnatural." Tayuya grew a little curious at the mention of the bijuu, but decided to put it off for later.

"Yeah. That's what I thought. I had to get a magnifying glass to look any closer, and it's almost creepy perfect. Like it was printed or something, not handwritten. But I also get this weird feeling that I _need_ it."

"You... probably shouldn't mess with it then." Gut feelings like that were things you should trust. Especially as a ninja. They usually ended up saving your life.

"Yeah. But I still want to know what the hell it's doing. It's just weird. Who the fuck put it there? Why? "

That was the billion-ryo question. Why? Why was Tayuya still alive? Why was she able to heal? Why did she have the ability to manipulate chakra like it was nothing?

It stumped her.

And she _really_ did not like not knowing what was going on.

But there wasn't exactly anything she could do about it. She didn't know any seal masters. Other than Jiraiya. And that did not seem like a good idea, considering her role in the death of the Hokage, his former _sensei_. He'd probably be willing to try and find out how to disable her healing just to kill her.

Not to mention he was usually nowhere to be found. She'd heard of his indulgences and quirks. He was infamous as a womanizer. But she didn't want to go looking for trouble.

"So what're you going to do?" Tayuya brought her attention back to Fu.

"What do you mean?"

"What are your planning on doing?"

"I don't know. Probably keep working for a while. Until I've got some money saved up."

"A-And then?" Tayuya realized that she had been thinking of leaving Taki. But Fu was important to her. And since she had taken on the role of being with her no matter what, that would probably never happen. Urgh. Caring about someone this much was tricky. Something completely new and different.

"Don't worry about it." Tayuya gave Fu a warm smile. "I don't really think that far ahead."

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**  
>Oh man. Drama. Sigh. As much as I like writing, these huge important scenes really take the wind out of my sails. It's hard to balance everything well. It's why this chapter got pushed back a little bit. I edited and rearranged things like 8 or 9 times. I'm probably going to be shifting to Friday releases, as it's easier on both me and my beta.<p>

But! Progress.

Tayuya is getting an idea of the depth of Fu's insecurities, which is a pretty big deal. Since it's like the freaking Marianas Trench. Fu's not exactly well-adjusted. Not that Tayuya can point any fingers.

It's no fun if your characters aren't screwed up in some way.

_Lots_ of excitment next chapter, so I hope you're captivated and on the edges of your (proverbial) seats.

read, review, follow, enjoy, etc.

ensou


	8. A Name, A Clan, A Family

**Warning:**

Please don't read this chapter if you're sensitive to graphic depictions of war crimes or physical injury. I don't want to be responsible for triggering anyone. Just skip to the end and scroll back to the beginning of the last scene. That should be enough to make it so you're not completely lost.

**Disclaimer:**

Were Mito, Kushina, Minato, and Jiraiya the _only_ people mentioned as truly proficient in advanced sealing techniques? If so, I don't own Naruto, nor the associated universe.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 8:<strong>  
><strong>A Name, A Clan, A Family<strong>

Another week passed after Fu divulged to Tayuya her history. The two kept practicing taijutsu in the morning, and eating lunch together around noon.

Tayuya had finally made some progress with her Ice training . She managed to condense the air into actual water vapor around her, and now that she had the feel for what needed to be done, freezing pre-existing or created water was now almost simple in comparison. But she couldn't manipulate it. It just... froze. And sat there. So she started attempting to 'grow' the ice in a direction, actually working with the ice itself through a combined use of her elements, actually mixing the two type of chakra and trying to find the needed balance. It was not easy. She had only managed a half an inch nub from the little bowl of water (now ice) that she using for practice.

But after a full month and a week of work, she _had_ perfected passing around her chakrams, and was extremely proud of her accomplishment. She could now move multiple rings of the compressed, spinning air simultaneously around her body, levitating half an inch away from her.

There was a certain thrill to having invisible various-sized rings of death humming over your skin and bones, circulating around your body like blood, and knowing that the simplest loss in control could mean certain death or dismemberment. This kind of technique really couldn't be learned or completed unless you either had truly perfect control, beyond even Tayuya's current point... or if you could heal really, _really_ fast. Which she could. It was the only reason she had been able to develop it this far.

Tayuya would easily admit that Fu was the closest she had ever been to someone. And she really didn't know what that entailed. They were friends. But they also spent a _lot_ of time together. She avoided thinking about it, and just enjoyed spending time with the girl.

But after that week, things changed.

* * *

><p>Tayuya was woken at midnight by a distinct 'poof'. She was instantly awake, having recognized the sound of a summons. She'd used her dokis enough to know <em>exactly<em> what it was like.

Had Orochimaru finally found out about her? Had he sent one of his snake summons to off her in the middle of the night, leaving only a bite as evidence? She didn't wear anything other than her underwear and a shirt at night, which didn't exactly afford any material protection to her skin. A snake's fangs could easily penetrate fabric, and she'd seen a few of his summons which could bite through plate steel. If this really was a surprise retaliatory attack, she was dead.

She bolted out of bed, throwing the thin white cotton sheets off as she jumped away from where she was. A solid 'ker-thunk' echoed around the plaster walls of the room, coming from the bare wooden floor by the edge she had just jumped from. That did _not_ sound like a snake. It sounded almost like...

She squinted in the direction the noise had come from. The blinds of the room were closed, and she was on the opposite side of the room, so there was almost no ambient light. But she could could faintly make out a blurry rectangular shape in the darkness. Being very cautious, she inched towards it, sliding her feet over the floor. By the point where she was within two feet of it, she could see what it was. A book. A fairly large one. Or least that's what it looked like.

_Where the fuck did that come from?_

She eyed the object warily, and decided that indirect contact would probably be best. There was no telling what would happen if she touched it directly. Temporarily mollified, she walked around the queen-size bed towards the short wooden dresser that sat in the other corner of the room. Rummaging around in one of the top drawers, she finally found what she wanted: a tube sock.

Closing the drawer, she moved back around to the other side of the bed, slipping the sock onto her left hand in the process. Squatting down in front of it, she poked the cover of the book with the sock. Satisfied that it didn't pose an _immediate_ risk to her, she attempted to pick it up using the same hand. Picking up that book with a single hand that was covered in a sock was deceivingly difficult. It kept trying to slip from between her grip like butter.

Once she managed it, she quickly dropped it onto the bed (it actually slipped) before turning to the bedside table at her left and pulling the draw-string on the lamp to turn it on.

She froze at the sight in front of her eyes, disbelieving her own senses.

_Gods fucking damn it. What the __**hell**__ is with all these seals appearing on my body?_ she thought in frustrated exasperation.

It was definitely not normal.

The back of her right hand held a circular pattern of characters on it that she recognized as similar to a standard storage seal. But this one appeared much more complicated than an average storage seal, characters twisting and turning, multiple arms converging on a central point like a vortex. She glared at the book on her bed, almost wishing she could ignite it just through sight. She didn't _need_ any new surprises in her life. She had enough shit on her plate right now, between the seal on her chest, her job with Yamada, and her deepening connection with Fu.

The book was featureless, except for an odd spiral imprinted on the front that reminded her of the one that she had just seen on her hand, and the cover appeared to be made of plain brown leather. Touching it cautiously with a bare finger, she concluded it was probably safe since there was no immediate reaction. Like a genjutsu trap. Or corroding her skin with acid.

Removing the sock from her hand, Tayuya sat down on the edge of her bed and pulled the book onto her bare thighs, shivering slightly from the coolness of the supple leather.

She hesitantly opened the cover. The first pages, the ones that was usually left blank, were covered in writing. Lines of small characters were arranged perfectly, and each was spaced exactly the same width apart. But there was no doubt they were handwritten. But it had been done by someone extremely skilled in calligraphy, at a level that took a lifetime to master.

It was beautiful, with flourishes and strokes that were efficient, conservative, and stylistic. The dark black ink of the characters subtly reflected the yellow light from the lamp at her side and contrasted the bleached white of the page it sat on. It briefly captivated her as if it was a work of art in a museum.

Drawing her eyes up to the top of the page, she started reading.

_'Dearest Tayuya. My name is Shu, and I am your father.'_

She halted in her tracks, a bubble of unadulterated rage bursting and spreading from the center of her chest, causing her blood to boil.

What the _fuck_ was this!? Was it a trick? This thing suddenly appears out of a hidden seal on her hand, and the writer tells her he's his _father_!?

Her mind ground to a standstill as the room around her warped like a fish-eye lens, red shades clouding over her vision.

Where had he been while she was on the streets? Where had he been when Orochimaru had conscripted her? _Where had he been when she __**died**__!?_

She violently fought the impulse to throw the book away from her as quickly as possible and incinerate it, destroying all remnants of its existence. She hadn't needed her parents before now, and she sure as hell didn't need them now.

A single thought of lucidity lanced through her seething mind.

But. Butbutbutbutbut it whispered. This could hold answers. Answers to questions you've had for years.

Those words snapped her out of her haze. If this really was her father, which she held reservations about, she wanted answers. She wanted to know if her years anger and bitterness was justified. And destroying the only link she had would not assist in that endeavor.

She took a few breaths, and her eyesight gradually shifted back to normal. But the explosion of animosity still lingered at the forefront of her mind. Tayuya turned back to the page and noted that she was gripping the book with so much pressure that not only her knuckles, but her entire hands were white. Forcibly relaxing her grip, she started reading again.

_'Dearest Tayuya. My name is Shu, and I am your father. If you are reading this, then it means that it has been 11 years since I last saw you, and that you turned eighteen today.'_

Her mind shuddered to a halt again. But this time, the anger was wiped from her mind and replaced with a sense of shock.

She had never known her birthday. She had only ever known her age and her first name. Seventeen. Tayuya.

But according to this, today was her birthday. The day she was born. Eighteen years ago. Today she was eighteen.

Hands shaking, she moved backwards on her bed, inching up the covers to the backboard. Leaning against the pillows, she drew her legs up and placed the book back onto her thighs, the leather cover now matching her body temperature.

_'Unfortunately, I will not be able to celebrate it with you, as I will no longer be alive. For that, I apologize and beg your forgiveness.'_

Her brain was quickly becoming numb from all of the unexpected information. His reason for his absence (death) explained a great deal (and it was something she had suspected), but it still didn't explain why she couldn't remember anything. Or _why_ he was dead. And why she was only learning this when she was eighteen. All of these things would have been _really_ great to know earlier in her life.

_'I chose to wait this long in the hopes that you would be mature enough to understand my decisions and actions. Why I did the things I did. Why I can only hold myself to blame._

Well, that question got answered quickly. But her mind was torn in two directions by the response. She wanted to hate this man, the man who said he was her father, for not disclosing these things earlier. That was her childish side.

Her (admittedly new and still developing) more sympathetic and mature side could understand his decision to wait. Children and teenagers were prone to extremely rash and possibly dangerous decisions. They also were very self-centered and she more than likely would have struggled to comprehend why he had left her alone in the world, and would have become very resentful and bitter about it. Much like she had. Except much worse.

_'For the first few years of your life we were extremely happy. A loving family. But then your mother, my wife Akiha, passed away, just before your fifth birthday.'_

So that must be why he was the only one writing. Eleven years ago, she would have been seven. How old had her mother been when she died? How old would she have been now, if she hadn't?

The questions that floated into her mind were slowing as she resigned herself to reading the entire thing through.

_'She died from an incurable illness that quickly destroyed her cells and ate away at her from the inside, causing her death in less than a week. I tried everything I could do to convince her to let me put her under a seal so we could find some way to save her. But Akiha refused, saying that she would not fight what she truly knew was a losing battle, that it would only make it that much harder to let go of her once she inevitably died. A week later, you went to her bed to talk to her, and came to me asking why Mama was so cold and wouldn't wake up.'_

A wave of harsh sadness and pity washed over Tayuya. She could only imagine how heart-rending that must have been to experience. She was glad she couldn't remember something like that. It would only bring nightmares and trauma.

_'Despite what she had intended, I felt worse about her passing, thinking there must have been something I could have done, but that now it was too late. I became inconsolable and depressed, throwing myself into my work and research to distract myself from the pain of losing the woman I had known and loved for twenty years. And because of that, because of my inability to move past the pain, I ended up neglecting you. It was my duty as a father to care for you. And I failed._

This explained why she needed to be eighteen. She knew by now that _everyone_ had flaws and made mistakes. But at eight or nine, she wouldn't have been able to comprehend someone like her father failing in such an important way, especially if they had been as good a family as he had implied.

_'I was a sealer. An Uzumaki. The last of the true Uzumaki seal masters. Trained by one of the clan council heads himself. Sealing is in our blood. Your blood, Tayuya Uzumaki.'_

It resonated within her, and Tayuya's own blood thrummed through her veins like her very soul was singing in exaltation at the knowledge and recognition of her own identity.

Uzumaki. Tayuya Uzumaki. She had a family name. A clan name.

But she had never heard of them. Did that mean they were gone? Or just hidden? She couldn't help but feel slightly resentful at the idea that she might have been able to live with true family after she lost her memory, instead of on the streets.

_'I was fifteen when an alliance of enemy nations came to destroy our island, nearing the end of my apprenticeship.'_

Destroy.

That was the word her eyes got stuck on.

By estimation, that was around the time of the Second Shinobi War. But she couldn't remember anything about an island being destroyed. Nothing that she had ever read had ever mentioned anything about something like that. If it had been large, wouldn't it have been recorded? Or would all records have been destroyed too?

_'My master had seen the growing tension and fear, and saw that there would be an attack. The other council members assured him we would win, just as we always had, and ignored his attempts to make plans in case we didn't. Our confidence had become arrogance. But he refused to let our legacy die. Refused to see it fall. Refused, even in the face of utter destruction, so he and I began to plan in secret._

_'But we were not prepared for them to attack so soon. They came in the middle of the night. It was a surprise attack to all of us, and we were caught off-guard. And their troops were greater than anything we had imagined.'_

So the attackers had managed to overrun them through sheer numbers. Numbers was a valid tactic. And only the most powerful shinobi could face an army with far fewer numbers and come out victorious. Shinobi like the Sannin. One-in-a-million.

_'When I heard that invaders had landed, I ran to the sealing hall where I knew he would be, trying to carry out his plan to his dying breath. He refused to accept our fate of destruction. So we hurried to complete the plan we had constructed, the two of us the only ones in the building. All of the other sealers were fighting the enemy alongside our warriors, as we should have been instead of abandoning our duty, but nobody had even considered the sealing hall. About what might happen if they failed. And they did.'_

_'Uzu was besieged for six hours before it fell. But in six hours, my master and I had finished. We had managed to collect everything. Entire bookcases from the sealing hall's library. The forbidden scrolls of kinjutsu in the basement vaults. Our history from the archives. All of my master's notes. We even went so far as to raid the other masters' offices, stealing their research. Trying as hard as we could, to preserve everything. To save it all. All these things were sealed into a scroll, nearly as tall and thick as I was.'_

Her mind boggled at that, and tried to imagine a scroll the size of an average fifteen year-old-boy. That was _huge_. She didn't know much about sealing scrolls, but even Orochimaru's snake summons contract wasn't that large. But if they had really managed to save an entire _library_, a clan's archives, and scrolls of kinjutsu, it just might have been needed. But that size bordered on sheer ridiculousness, not to mention it would be impossible to carry.

_'By then, the enemy had broken through our defenses, killing everyone in their path. They advanced on the sealing hall, intent on destroying our clan's heritage completely. My master hastily wrote special a storage seal on the back of my hand, and then sealed the large scroll inside of it. I tried to stop him, to tell him he should be the one to carry it as had been the plan, but he denied my protests as the seal sunk below my skin.'_

_'He said to me "Shu. You must carry on. You must survive. For if you do not, our clan's very history, our very soul dies here today. You must persevere. This is my final order as your teacher."_

Tayuya paused. That would be a lot of pressure for a fifteen year-old. Shouldering an entire clan's techniques and being told that you needed to live or everything would be for nothing?

_'He pushed me in the direction of the back entrance, telling me to run as the enemy ninja entered the building, that he would hold them off while I escaped and lived on. I couldn't look back. But I still heard the muffled shouts and cries of pain, and could only pray that they were not from him._

How hard must it have been, to abandon the person who had been his mentor? Knowing that the man was walking to his death, to protect him. But it was also to protect their culture, and their history.

_'So I ran away from the hall. I ran and I ran. I ran past bodies, littering the streets. My own kinsmen. My own family. Our blood flowed like rainwater on the roads.'_

Tayuya was traumatized simply by her experiences with the blood purges in Kiri, and she had to pause for a moment to push the rising memories back. But he had seen this done to his own _family_. People he would have known for years and easily recognized.

He must have either been extremely strong-willed, or had become overloaded from the emotions and closed them off, focusing on the only thing that could distract him and keep him sane: the task he had been given. She was beginning to respect him despite her lingering bitterness about her lack of a normal childhood, one where he had supposedly ended up neglecting her.

_'I ran until I reached the south coast of the island, opposite from where the invaders had landed, sick from the exhaustion. There were emergency evacuation boats, with civilians in them. They had only decided to abandon the island once the invaders had broken through our front lines. I was able to reach them before the one of last sets of three launched, joining one of the small craft before they departed.'_

_'The invaders had made landfall from the Land of Hot Water. We aimed for Fire Country, in the direction of Konoha, with which we were allied. The sea was cold, the only light coming from the raging fires of the burning buildings on the island.'_

It must have all happened to quickly for Konoha to respond or assist, if what he was describing was any indicator. He made it sound like the attackers had overrun the island in less than half a day.

_'We nearly made it, the shore less than two hundred meters away, but enemy ship were waiting to destroy us, the surrounding waters littered with the wreckage of the boats that had left before us. A water user performed a technique that raised a twenty foot wave, laughing from above us as our boat was destroyed. He killed us lazily as we bobbed in the water, our life preservers holding us afloat and making us easy targets. I managed to slip out of mine, and tried to swim in the direction of the shore. It was in sight. But I was already exhausted, and I slipped beneath the waves into darkness, resigned to my fate of having failed my master within hours._

_'This is what genocide looks like. Where one side is the aggressor, and the other defends hopelessly, only to be wiped out completely. Nobody spared. Senseless slaughter, where even the blood of women and children is spilled. All in the name of cleansing the world of our name and our abilities.'_

Tayuya felt sick, and had to stop reading, flashbacks of Kiri coming to the forefront of her mind. The smell of rust from drying blood splattered on the walls. The corpses filled with maggots and buzzing with flies. The rotting stench of flesh. A baby crying for its mother who had been killed seconds before, only to be killed itself in her arms. Watching someone who had no defense be killed, only because they were alive.

She tried to drag herself out of the memories, focusing on other things. The first thing that came to her mind was Fu, and she forced herself to embrace it, to remember every detail, blotting everything else in her mind out. How they had met, the training they done, the festival where they had solidified their friendship, the lunches they had shared, Fu's confession of what she was, and Tayuya's own subsequent admission. How Fu somehow always managed to make her feel better, no matter what mood she was in.

The flashbacks began to subside, but she kept up her positive thoughts, thinking about the green-haired girl until the horrific recollections were completely gone.

It felt like it took forever.

Once she was finally calm, the shaking stopped, and only cold sweat remaining on her body, she looked back at the book, forcing her eyes to not look at those words, to read the next paragraph, in hopes that it would distract her from anything else that could trigger another episode.

_'When I awoke, two days later, it was to the most beautiful face I had ever seen. Your mother was stunning even at fourteen.'_

_'She had been traveling with her father through the Land of Fire. And upon hearing news of Uzu's imminent destruction, they had hurried to return, only to see a dead city, burning and crumbling. They found me half-dead on the shore, and carried me inland, away from the smoking ruins and remains of the island. Away from my birthplace. My world. My home.'_

_'They were members of the Yakin, one of the minor clans on Uzushio. They had excelled in crafting blades. They were exceptionally skilled in Yin release even though they were not a ninja clan, and they were able to use that skill to shape a weapon specifically for the intended wielder. Because of this, their blades were highly sought-after and considered works of art, despite being, or perhaps because they were, truly lethal tools of war.'_

Was that where she had gotten her natural talent in Yin chakra manipulation? From her mother? If they were as inherently skilled as she was at it, Tayuya could understand why they wouldn't have to be ninja in order to mold chakra or utilize it.

_'The Uzumaki warriors traditionally trained in ken-do, the way of the sword. The presence of the Yakin clan had only served to make us more feared. We had our seals. We had our blades. We were ruthless. And we were a threat. It was this conclusion that led the countries to form an alliance and decide that we were better off destroyed than left be.'_

The little hope she had lost became anger. Anger towards the villages that had stolen her chance at a normal life. Anger towards the Kages who had made the decision. Anger towards the ninja who had participated in the systematic killing of her family, her clans.

It was the first time she felt the effects of the Shinobi Wars first-hand, and she was torn between rage and resignation. Rage because it could have been different. Resignation because it was in the past. There was nothing that could be done now.

_'Akiha's father was considered one of the better smiths in Uzushio and he was occasionally commissioned to craft a blade for someone on the mainland. Usually a higher ranking noble, or a skilled shinobi from an allied village. He and his daughter had been returning from delivering a blade to a noble in Otafuki Gai when rumors of the attack reached them. But they had come too late.'_

She couldn't even imagine what it would be like returning home, only to find everything a smoking crater. Everyone you knew dead. Your entire life, just... gone.

She had never had a place to call 'home'. She had never had 'family'. Even though she had always wished for both, she had never had (or could not remember having, as the case seemed to be) either one. So even the idea of losing those things was alien. But she could understand the kind of pain that loss would cause. The aftereffects it might have.

_'We fled, traveling through Fire Country towards Iron. Iron was neutral to the shinobi wars, and as neither Akiha, her father, nor I were actually ninja, it was deemed to be the safest option. We traveled for a week, making haste. I concealed my red hair, the trademark of the Uzumaki that you inherited, dirtying with mud it while we traveled so that it appeared brown.'_

Tayuya pulled some of her hair around to the front of her face. She had never thought of the color as important before, just another shade. But he was saying it was a symbol. One that marked a person as a member of the clan. One that she had inherited. And that helped her believe that all of this might actually be real, despite how it felt like some kind of fantastic tale. Now that she thought about it, she had seen very few people with red hair, much less with the exact same shade as her. Was it really so uncommon that it could be used as an immediate identifier?

_'I was in such shock that I did not even think about my parents or my older brother Ichirou until the second day I was awake. The sealing hall had been on the far south end of Uzu, so I had been living on my own in an apartment closer to it for my apprenticeship. But they had been on the northern coast, the side of the island where the invaders had made landfall. And so I knew with horrific certainty that there was no way they had survived. They would have been unable to fight back or run.'_

_'I cried myself to sleep for weeks, only Akiha's presence penetrating my depression.'_

So he had lost his family too. It seemed like wherever she looked, everyone around her had lives filled with tragedy. Fu and her parents. Shu and the destruction of his clan. Herself, losing her own memory and unable to remember anything before she was eight.

_'We lived in a small town in the south of Iron named Haboro. It was calm and peaceful, and eventually Takumi, Akiha's father, became well regarded among the samurai for the swords he crafted. I continued my studies in sealing, pushing myself to live up to the task my master had entrusted to me, to honor him and my clan._

And there were the effects of the pressure and responsibility that had been pushed onto him. Something like that wouldn't just disappear, especially considering how traumatic the entire experience had been. It was probably how he had coped with the loss. Focusing only on the only thing he knew and could do, instead of being dragged into the past. Though it sounded like her mother had helped a great deal. Having someone who had gone through the same loss could ease the pain and create a bond of solidarity, as only they would understand what the other had gone through.

_'Akiha and I became best friends, and we eventually fell in love.'_

So that bond had only gotten deeper as they grew older, or they had only ever considered the other as the person they would be willing to spend the rest of their life with.

_'We married when I was twenty, after her father had given his full approval. We moved away from Iron a few years later, leaving Takumi behind, settling in a rural area of Grass Country. We wanted to raise a child, and Iron's harsh winters and short summers weren't suitable for doing so.'_

The Land of Iron was notorious for its climate. Even though it was bordered by two countries that were extremely temperate, Waterfall and Rice, it somehow managed to have snow and be frozen almost all year due to a weird mountain range and the high altitude.

_'The Yakin clan had a tradition, that as a child was being born, a blade would start to be forged for them, to be given to them when they were fourteen in a ceremony. The blade would show kind of person the child would grow up to be, almost prophetic according to stories he told.'_

_'Takumi's father insisted upon maintaining that tradition, and nothing would sway him. It was his only condition for letting us leave him behind. Since the house he lived in was too remote for a phone, I linked a pair of journals so they would share the contents between the two, and he was satisfied that that would be good enough to agree to let us go.'_

Strange tradition. But not the oddest she had ever heard of. Some people still divined the sex of a baby using bones. Because _that_ was accurate.

But something like those journals would be extremely handy. Why didn't things like that exist normally? Was it because of the complexity of the work? The fact that so _few_ people actually knew sealing to the extent that they could create new seals? It was rather strange, now that she thought about it.

_'You were born four years later, when I was twenty-eight. Akiha had a relatively painless labor, and you were brought into our lives. A few weeks after your birth, Takumi told us that the blade he had forged was one of his best. It was extremely pure and beautiful, showing you would be a truly good person. __He planned to keep it until your ceremony, maintaining it so that it would be in perfect condition.'_

Tayuya was simultaneously skeptical and intrigued. She had not been a good person. At all.

But, she had also changed, and now she thought that she _could_ be considered good at best, and neutral at worst.

She fully regretted the things she had done, the person she had been, and was working hard to change herself. Was it meant to represent her as she was now? Or something else?

_'We were happy. I made seals in order to provide for us, selling them to shinobi stores and by commission. Akiha primarily raised you, taking care of you. We both loved you completely._

_'But then Akiha's illness struck. Her death was tragic. And left a hole in my soul that could not be filled.'_

She could imagine. The two of them had supported each other for over twenty years, through hardships and pain that could never be healed. And then his only support had disappeared, leaving him lost and unable to deal with the sudden gap in his life.

_'As I mentioned, I attempted to distract myself with work, and in the process ended up neglecting you. I am fully to blame for the events that occurred. Words would not be enough, so I will show you.'_

Show her? _How?_ She looked below in confusion.

A small spiral sat on the page, and as Tayuya stared at it, the world seemed to twist around her. She gasped at the sharp pain of something foreign invading her mind with the subtlety of a hammer. There was a thought that was not hers, but was still present, worming through her head. She followed and grasped it, dragging it to the front of her consciousness.

And then she was no longer in her room.

* * *

><p><em>Eleven years earlier<em>

Tayuya was in a basement, writing, and she vaguely recognized that this was not her body. She sat at a desk, as her hand moved across sheets of paper, drawing complex characters in intricate shapes. She began feeling emotions that weren't hers, and fleeting knowledge that she didn't know. She was somehow inside a memory. Her father's memory.

Sensations began to blur together as foreign thoughts ran through her mind as part of the memory's playback. She was now some weird amalgamation of her father and herself, but she was also still only Tayuya. She tried to avoid thinking about the complexities and impossibility of what she was experiencing, and surrendered to it.

The desk she sat at was wooden, placed in the corner of a solid stone room. Bright lights hung from the ceiling, and the desk lamp to her right that sat against the wall illuminated the paper under her hand.

Various things were positioned around her at the edges of her sight. An inkwell to her right. A set of handwritten notes to her left. A book to the top-right, propped on a stand so it could be read without holding it up.

The notes that her hand was writing had a number of words that she couldn't even recognize. But there was a drawing above the words that looked like the same seal she had on her hand.

Tayuya/Shu heard a loud bang go off upstairs. His hand jerked, the brush skittering across the rest of the page like a seismometer's needle. But he didn't even notice it.

That sound. That sound had been a failed seal activation. The explosive kind. Something he hadn't heard since his childhood on Uzu. Something that always left the people in the immediate vicinity needing medical attention.

His blood froze in his veins and pounded like a drum in his ears.

The only other person in the house was Tayuya.

Oh god.

He stood up so quickly that the chair behind him was knocked over with a large 'crack'. Rushing to the other end of the room, he flew up the stairs, praying to Kami that his daughter was alright. That he had been mistaken.

The scent of smoke at the top of the stairs refuted that. Throwing open the basement door, he ran into the hallway. The smell was coming from the front of the house. His feet scrabbled for purchase as her ran towards the front door and then turned right into the hallway that led to the library. He halted.

The door had been blown off the hinges, lying askew in the hallway, broken in three pieces. He hurried to the doorway.

His stomach dropped, and the blood drained from his face. The surge of adrenaline he had had in the basement was refreshed anew.

Nearly the entire wall that made up the front of the house was missing. Pieces of plaster wrapped around jagged edges of the support beams at the top and bottom of the missing wall, looking like the maw of a toothy giant. The books that had lined the side shelves were completely scattered across the floor, some nearly cinder, others burning and smoldering around the room.

The walls were coated in a thin film of ash that also permeated the air. The furniture that had sat close to the front wall was in pieces, looking like already used timber, and all of it had been blown back to the wall where he was standing.

A two-foot circle of the wood floor near the missing wall was just gone, exposing the cement roof of the gigantic basement underneath it, a black ring of burnt wood surrounding it for three feet, the edges aflame. But the blackness of the floor was only in close proximity to that hole. That indicated a short, hot, forceful explosion. If Tayuya had been outside of the blast radius, and only hit by the concussive force, she might be alright, with just some broken bones. He had to be optimistic.

Shu quickly covered his mouth with his shirt and entered the room, moving through it, searching for any signs of his daughter. He threw pieces of the smoking chairs and couch to the side, ignoring the heat and pain in his hands, digging through the rubble. When he reached the bottom of the pile with no results, he became frantic.

"TAYUYA!" He yelled, hoping she might be able to respond. _If she even can respond._ the terrible voice at the back of his head said.

"TAYUYA!"

He wanted to fall to his knees. How could he have let this happen?

He was snapped out of his tortuous thoughts by a small sound from beyond the missing wall.

Running over to the hole, he stepped onto the slightly smoking grass that was covered in pieces of the front wall looking around for the source. A blob at the corner of his eyes caught his attention, and he focused in on it.

Oh gods. Was that her?

He flew across the lawn towards the discolored shape that lay un-moving.

She had been blown almost 20 meters from the house.

No. No.

Nonononononono.

He halted in shock, his heart in his throat, before forcing his legs to continue forward through sheer willpower. The scene in front of him looked like it was out of a nightmare.

She was sprawled on the ground, the area around her smoking. The grass immediately surrounding her was brown from the heat of being so close to her.

He forced himself to look. To see what had happened.

Her left side was black, the once-pink skin charred like charcoal, from what was left of her leg upwards.

Only obsidian, cracked stumps remained of her two left limbs.

Her left leg stopped existing three inches below her hip.

Her left arm was just... gone.

The left side of her hip was completely exposed, the skin burned into the nothingness, leaving only crumbling black bone that faded to sickly yellow and then ivory white.

Her chest was exposed, her shirt incinerated, and coal-colored flesh surrounded the ash-tainted carbonized bone of her bare ribs.

Her right side was better. But not by much. It was raw, skin completely missing in most areas, exposing muscle. And it bled freely.

He couldn't even look at her face, afraid he'd break down if he saw it. But he could still smell the sharp sulfuric smell of the burnt keratin in her hair.

He fell to his knees, all of the strength he had been mustering sapped from his muscles at the sight. Stomach acid gurgled up his esophagus, threatening to overflow.

It was too similar to the images that haunted his dreams at night.

Dreams of his dead friends. His teacher. His parents and brother.

"Papa." Oh gods. Her voice. Her beautiful voice. The happy tinkling soprano had become akin to rusted pieces of metal scraping against each other. "It hurts." How could she even talk in that much pain? How was she not crying, screaming at the top of her lungs? _How was she even alive?_

"I know, sweetie, I know. I'm so sorry." he responded, trying to soothe her, but his voice came anguished and unconvincing to his ears.

His limbs felt like lead.

But the epinephrine that saturated his body refused to let his brain stop, forcing the neurons to fire as fast as chemically possible.

He needed to move her inside, now. She was going to bleed out if he just stood there, and he would not let his daughter die while both he and she were still breathing. He would not make the same mistake he made with Akiha again.

He forced his arms to tenderly pick her up from the right as carefully as he could, and his heart broke every time he heard a soft whimpers and cries.

His felt something warm running down and dripping off of his arms. Her blood.

She felt so hot against his chest. Like she was still in the heart of the explosion.

He carried her into the smoking, smoldering library, stepping as quickly and smoothly as he could through the rubble, trying to avoid jostling her at all costs, moving towards the basement, towards the sealing chambers.

They were the only things he could think of that could possibly help at this point.

Shu descended the cement basement stairs as fast as he could, struggling to think of something that would extend the little time she had. He reached the bottom of the stairs, and headed towards the doorway on the left that was open, revealing a large forty foot square cement room.

The sealing chambers were his pride and joy. Where he did the most complicated aspects of his research and testing.

But now they had a new purpose.

They were needed to save his daughter.

He walked to the center of the room and turned to the right so that her head was farthest from the door.

He crouched down. "Tayuya. I need to put you down now. It's going to hurt. I'm sorry." His voice sounded empty. Flat. Foreign. Like it wasn't him who had spoken, but someone else.

She moved her chin only a fraction of an inch down, cracking the blackened flesh on the side of her neck in the process.

He lifted her away from his body, her raw skin pulling away from being adhered to his shirt that was soaked in her blood.

She cried out in pain, and it felt like an arm had punched straight through his chest.

He gently placed her on the cold cement floor, and rushed out the door without looking back, thinking only about what he needed. The chakra-reactive ink was in a locked cabinet on the other side of the room from his desk. Instead of unlocking it, he ripped the door off of its hinges, too pressed for time to care.

Grabbing the largest bottle he could see, he turned and dashed to his desk, snatching up the brush he had been using only minutes ago and running back to the room.

A red puddle now surrounded his daughter, expanding and growing with every beat of her heart, refusing to slow.

He didn't have much time.

"Tayuya! You have to stay awake! Please! You can't let go!" Unlike before, his voice was now a taut wire cable, fraying from tension and stress.

Unscrewing the cap on the bottle of ink, he flung it towards the doorway so that it wouldn't be in his way, but it stuck to his bloody fingers and barely made it half the distance. Dipping the brush into the bottle and pulling it out, he starting drawing characters as fast as he was physically able, the array already constructed in his mind.

But it wasn't fast enough in his opinion. Every second longer that it took to draw the array was another second she was slipping away into death.

The only sound in the room was the furious skritching of his brush against the dry cement and the sound of her shallow, short breaths. The sound was rapidly becoming softer, and he knew he was losing her. But he couldn't look up. Couldn't stop.

She stopped breathing after twenty seconds, but he kept writing.

The pool of blood still spread, but he kept drawing.

And three minutes later, he finished.

Approximately 200 characters made up a stable, standard medic stasis seal. A stasis seal had a time displacement ratio of 1:500. Every second inside would be 500 outside, about 8 minutes. For things like common disease, that worked fine, the heart beating only once or twice in those eight minutes.

But that wouldn't be enough here.

What he had drawn was highly advanced form that had been in one of the Uzumaki kinjutsu scrolls. There were hundreds of designs in them. But he had forced himself to memorize them all.

This array was composed of 800 characters. It was much closer to true suspended animation, actually slowing down time within the bounded field in a 1:500,000 ratio. It was his best chance at trying to keep her in a state so that he could save her, giving him five days for every second inside the active area.

It was notoriously unstable for any longer than a few months on the outside. The world rebelled against the injustice of having a pocket of time increasingly out of alignment, and would eventually resort to converting all of the contained matter to energy, using it to pull everything back into place. Because the phenomenon resembled an elastic band being slowly stretched and then released, it was called 'time-snap', and was why such high ratios were considered forbidden, as they would stretch reality faster. Normal stasis seals could be used for years before they needed to be deactivated. This one would last two and a half months at best before destabilizing.

But if he didn't have a solution within two months, he never would.

"Sweetie, I promise I'll do everything I can to try and fix this. I'm so sorry." He said, solely for his benefit at this point. He could only hope that he was able to keep that promise.

He activated the seal. She didn't look any different, but he knew it had worked, the puddle of cooling crimson that had been continuously inching outwards no longer advancing any further.

Collapsing backwards onto the cold floor, his fingers painted trails of blood, which had been on his hands since he'd carried her, as he pulled them across the concrete and clenched them into fists. Tears of sadness and anger leaked from the corners of his eyes. This was his fault. He should have known that she would be interested in sealing because of him. It was only natural.

Except she hadn't known the one rule to learning it. Never, _ever_ do it on your own. There was a reason Uzushiogakure used a master/apprentice system for teaching fuiinjutsu. And the results of mistakenly thinking that she would have come to him first were right in front of him, in the form of her charred, mangled body.

She had probably just wanted to impress him. Wanted to get his attention. It was a harmless wish. And one he should have been fulfilling anyways.

He blamed himself completely. The fact that she had managed to get the chakra ink, which he kept locked up for the very reason of keeping away from her, and that he hadn't noticed it indicated that this was probably not a recent development.

He drew himself together. He needed to focus on saving her.

The closest thing that he could think of to what he needed to implement was Mito-sama's famed Yin Seal, and her related regeneration abilities. It was deceptively simple in theory, requiring only the control to store chakra at a single point on the user's body. But that kind of control was nigh impossible to achieve, and the amount of chakra in the seal was also gigantic.

Tayuya had been technically dead for over three minutes. He knew from reading medical information when Akiha was dying that that was edging on the time limit that iryonin could bring someone back through resuscitation. And it was within the time frame that brain damage started without getting oxygenated blood. Since the brain acted as the anchor for the soul, it was possible that her soul had already started to slip free and detach.

He could only hope that he had managed to halt that in time.

* * *

><p>A blur flew past, and Tayuya got the sense that a little more than three weeks had passed before they slowed back down. She stood in front of a plain rectangular mirror above a sink, her father looking back. It was the first time she had seen his face. And all she could think was he looked like shit.<p>

Shu was haggard and scruffy, dark bags under his eyes. The red hair that was the exact same shade as her own was flattened and limp, and his skin had a sickly pallor. He had only slept and eaten when his body absolutely required it.

But he had finally managed to do it.

He had designed a seal that would transfer almost all of his life-force over to Tayuya, healing her in the process. And for an Uzumaki, that was no small deal. His life-force had the potential of keeping him alive for close to two hundred years. And he was only 35, which meant he had more than eighty percent left. It was the only source of energy he had been able to find that was both strong enough, and available in large enough quantities.

The seal he had invented was insanely complex. And insane in practice.

He had attempted to design it in such a way that he would have enough time to arrange a place for her to live before he died, time enough to get everything in order to pass on to her. However, if his calculations and the design weren't _perfect_, he could die before the transfer process was complete, the life completely sucked out of him. Leaving only a husk.

But he had to try. There was no other option. Otherwise he wouldn't be able to face Akiha in the afterlife.

He left the bathroom at the end of the brightly-lit basement, walking past the desk. The splinters of the cabinet door still lay on the floor to his left, as he hadn't even thought to clean them up. He turned right, going into the sealing chamber where she lay, frozen in time. He focused his thoughts away from the fact that she was dead right now. This would work. It _had_ to work.

A spiderweb of characters crawled across the smooth cement floor and walls. It was the most complex seal he knew of, and he had memorized every single seal he had ever seen. He was essentially a living copy of the Uzumaki sealing archives. And this trumped all of them, incorporating pieces from more than _three hundred_ individual seals.

But the hardest thing hadn't been the design. It had been so hard writing the seal while she lay there, always at the corner of his eye. Always reminding him of his failure as a father. He had avoided looking at her at all costs, as the pain of it was unbearable. It wasn't an image you could ever become desensitized to.

10,000 kanji littered every available position. And he still didn't know if it would work. But he had to try.

The only light in the room was from a single bulb that hung from the center of the ceiling, casting sharp shadows in every direction but illuminating Tayuya perfectly. She was deathly still, like a lifeless puppet. He turned off the light and sat down in the area that was marked for the donor, cross legged, facing Tayuya's feet, his back to the now-closed door.

He would get one chance. He had triple-checked everything, but the fact of the matter was that this was an untested seal. And that was what had brought about this tragedy.

He resolved himself, and deactivated the stasis seal. The life-transfer seal required there to be absolutely no outside interference.

Then he activated the main matrix. His back arched, and he momentarily tasted copper before it disappeared, his brain too overwhelmed with sensory input

It felt like fire, burning and twisting.

It felt like ice, chilling and piercing.

It felt like the sun, an inferno so hot there could not even be ash.

It felt like the void, a vacuum so cold his body would shatter.

It felt like Everything.

And It felt like Nothing.

It pulled through his body towards the floor in excruciating agony. Lava ignited, roasting in his veins, and his brain felt like it was being ground to a paste. Rods and tendrils of pain flowed like molasses through his spine towards the ground. It was as if his nerves were pulled out of his body and flayed in the open air. Tears leaked from his eyes, and his breathing became pained and labored.

The sharp smell of ozone managed to penetrate his pain-filled mind as the characters immediately around him started to crackle and spark a rusty red color, arcing. The energy stabilized, and they began glowing that same shade, before transitioning to crimson and then scarlet, continuing to get brighter and brighter. He worried that the transfer conduits were creating a bottleneck, unable to handle the sheer density and strength of what was being dragged out of him, the infamously strong Uzumaki life force becoming the thing that would permanently destroy them both. It would be morbidly ironic.

But the spiraling pathways held, and the blazing light moved away from him outwards, curving up onto the walls to the filter arrays, and then down back towards the center of the room, twisting in curving trails around his daughter, a luminescent vermilion vortex.

Nothing happened, and for a moment he became frantic, worried that he had failed, and it was simply draining him into nothingness, stealing his life to leave him only a shriveled corpse.

But then translucent red threads jumped out of the terminals around her, and burrowed into her body, sucked inwards, drawn into her center.

He forced himself to look at her. He needed to know if it was working. For another second, there was no change, but then slowly, gradually, the blackened skin began fading to red. And the red to white.

Her face which had been black and disfigured beyond belief re-arranged itself into the wonderful combination of his and Akiha's features.

Her red hair (_his_ hair) which had been almost entirely burnt started to grow back out, pushing its way out of her skull like extruded wire.

And her missing limbs, which had been only stumps, began to move. Bone forcing itself out of the red-white lumps of tissue and flesh, extending in rounded protrusions that became sheathed by woven red muscle and white sinew, nerves and arteries interweaving and twisting through the flesh like vines.

It was captivating, and the part of Tayuya that floated within the memory was entranced as she saw her body repair itself from mortal wounds for the second time. This was just as interesting as when her legs had been crushed. The two processes were completely different in comparison. Her legs had been repaired by undoing the actions done to them, essentially rewinding her body to a point where it had been alright. But this was true regeneration, and seeing how bone _grew_ as opposed to reassembling was mesmerizing.

Fresh skin flowed over the still growing limbs like mercury, moving all the way down to the tips of the digits that had just finished their extension and growth.

The tendrils of red kept flowing into her, even after she was visibly healed, and Shu wondered how long it would continue.

He gasped as the intense pain and dragging sensation abruptly halted, bringing with it welcomed relief from the agony. He didn't even know how long the entire process had taken, his sense of time warped by the unending pain.

The twisting lines of kanji that were glowing like red neon slowly lost their color, fading to orange. It looked like they had been permanently burned into the floor, melted into the concrete from the intensity of power, even if there had been no heat. The threads that still hung around her sunk into her skin, leaving nothing left in the air.

He collapsed, the blood that had collected in his mouth to the spat onto the floor, he tried to catch his breath, and after a few seconds began inching his way over to the prone figure of his daughter.

When he got close, he could see her chest slowly moving up and down.

She was alive. Alive.

Everything would be alright.

A sensation of cool relief spread down his shoulders and over him, and all of the pain and exhaustion that the extraction and transfer had caused didn't exist anymore.

The girl in front of him mumbled something, and then opened her eyes. They struggled to focus on Shu's face.

"Who're you? What's going on? What's happening?" She asked. Her eyes darted around the dimly-lit room before landing back on Shu, the characters below them still glowing a muted orange. "Where're we?"

He searched her face, waiting for a hint of recognition, but it never came .

She didn't remember him. She didn't know him.

His heart shattered.

He wanted to cry and rage and shout at the injustice of it all. She had been healed. Her soul had been re-seated properly. But the shock of forcefully pulling it back into her body had done something irreparable.

Complete retrograde amnesia wasn't uncommon in victims of failed soul-techniques. And this had caused it as well.

There was no way to give a soul back the memories it had lost, unless they had been stored somehow beforehand. And hers had not.

He had ignored the possibility that this could happen, focusing to the point of delusion on the most perfect outcome. Obsessing in order to save his daughter.

He was utterly crushed. But he knew what he had to do.

Shu smiled at his daughter. "I'm nobody. But you're going to be alright now." he whispered. And pulling on the small amount of chakra he could, he re-activated the stasis seal that was still drawn around her, freezing her in a bubble of independent time.

He had saved her, but he had lost her. It was both the best and the worst result. She would never remember him. Never remember Akiha or Takumi. And with so little time for him to live left, it would be inhumanely cruel to give her happiness in the knowledge that he was her father, only for it to be torn away and ripped to shreds the moment he passed away.

He sat, weeping at the injustice.

After some time, after his tears had run dry and the pain had died down, he stood up slowly and stumbled, barely managing to catch himself. He was weak. Extremely weak. He hadn't even noticed the energy loss, too focused on trying to ensure that Tayuya was alright.

Shu leaned against the surface, dragging himself as he made his way towards the bathroom. Through the doorway. Back in front of the mirror. He looked the same as before.

Then his red hair began to turn white in front of his eyes, beginning at the roots and gradually extending to the tips.

So this was his price. He sighed. Only months or weeks to live. He felt like it was closer to weeks. He'd needed to start getting things in order and ready. Even if she would never remember him. She was his flesh and blood.

He wasn't going to abandon her ever again, even in death.

* * *

><p><em>Present<em>

Tayuya was wrenched back to her bed.

She just sat there, stunned into silence.

She had felt everything. Her father's emotions. His feelings. His sadness. His despair. His self-loathing. His pain. His euphoria.

His _love_.

He had loved her. So much that he had gambled with his own life to try and ensure she would live. She had been able to _feel_ just how much he loved her. It was like nothing she had ever felt. It was overwhelming. Completely consuming.

Was that what it was like to be a parent? Was that what feeling truly unconditional love towards someone was?

She was caught up in the raw emotions, and felt disconnected from the rest of the world. Something wet dripped down her cheeks, and she vaguely recognized that it was caused by the tears running down her face. She took some deep breaths and they slowed to a stop.

She couldn't hate him. How could you hate someone like that? Someone who had sacrificed themselves like that, fighting against fate, against time, so that you could live?

He had been a her father, and it had been _her fault_ that he had died.

The book was still in her hands, her eyes stuck on the spiral between paragraphs. She moved to the next line.

_'Sealing is an amazing art, to allow something like the transfer of memories, is it not? Even if that particular seal is limited in how much it can store. You may wonder why I chose those particular memories, instead of others, instead of things like the happy times we had together. It's because I want you to know, to truly understand what I had to do and why. But do not blame yourself.'_

That was _exactly_ what she was doing. As much as he told her that, she still felt unbelievably guilty about the things she had scene. The fear and pain she had caused him.

_'It was no fault but my own. I was responsible for you, and I failed in my duty as a parent. I paid for that mistake with my own life, to make sure that you could live. I wanted to wait to tell you in hopes that you would understand. That you would not be angry at me for leaving you. For not being able to care for you.'_

How could she not think of him as anything except loving after that? Any doubts she had had been washed away like flotsam down a raging river. But she supposed he had a point. She would have been unable to understand the depth of his feelings if she had been younger. Unable to understand why he did what he did.

_'I plan on leaving you with a woman who offered to take you in, only a short ways from the nearest village. She helped and advised Akiha when she was raising you, and she will be able to take care of you.'_

Tayuya could barely recall the old lady that she had lived with. She had become sick, and died less than six months later. Perhaps from the same thing her mother had. Everyone that she stayed around for an extended period of time seemed to die. Her mother. Her father. The caretaker. The Sound Four. Kimimaro. It was enough to make a person superstitious.

_'The journal that was connected to your grandfather's was burned in the explosion, along with almost all of the books in that room. I have not been able to inform him of what happened before now, but I hope to send a letter, if I have enough strength to make it the village one last time before I die. My strength weakens daily. I am almost at the point where I cannot make the trip to your planned caretaker's house. But I will, for you.'_

Well, that explained why she had never met him. After the old lady had died, everything was a blur and she somehow ended up on the streets of Tanzaku Gai. She had been alright for a few months. But the streets were not kind to an 8-year old girl.

Orochimaru had found her when she was ten. Tayuya had been unconsciously applying subtle and weak Yin-enhanced genjutsus to shop clerks by whistling simple tunes. It would distract them while the other children stole things, like food. She hadn't known why it worked, only that they would go into a daze and not notice what was really going on.

He had offered her a life that mattered, off of the streets. She had been skeptical even at that age, and it took him a few visits before she agreed. She had made him promise that he wouldn't hurt her. Which was terribly naive in retrospect, and is what had brought her into this mess. The lying fuck-face.

_' Your grandfather should have been visiting you, and given you your sword when you were fourteen, so I can only hope that most of this information is superfluous and only a new perspective, as in the best case you should at least know about my and your mother's existence. But I have learned to always prepare for the worst.'_

She could imagine, having managed to save _the entire fucking clan library_ only because he and his shishou had planned ahead when nobody else had.

_'This book contains records of our clan's history, our culture, our life. It was mine when I lived on Uzushio, and now it is yours.'_

She skipped ahead, past the all the pages of handwriting to find a title page or something. She found one. 'The History and Traditions of the Uzumaki Clan'. It sounded kinda boring.

_'However, it is not the only thing I have left you, by far. I have compiled a scroll, the same scroll my master used, adding all of my research notes to the knowledge and history already present. My personal journals are also included in that collection, and contain records of the events I have experienced from my childhood up until today, but I could not include them anywhere else in good conscious due to some of the information on fuinjutsu they contain.'_

_'The scroll is stored in your hand, like this book was, using a completed version of the small seal I had been designing. But, the other sections of this seal will take a seal master to unlock. Hopefully this will prevent any possible deadly accidents ever from happening again. The notes to unlock it are written at the back of this book._

She flipped to the end of the book, and found the same blank pages covered in tiny handwriting. Except this was completely incomprehensible to her. There were technical terms and descriptions that she couldn't even _begin_ to understand. It was a very effective solution, as anyone who could understand this would be adequate enough to ensure she did not fuck up and blow herself to pieces ever again.

Finding a seal master just became a higher priority.

_'As I carried on the will of Uzushiogakure and our pride in sealing, so too do I charge you. Embrace your heritage, our legacy, and carry it forward to the next generation.'_

Her vision swam for a moment, becoming a little lightheaded. That was a lot of pressure. She was responsible for the continuation or complete loss of their history and knowledge, just as her father had been before her. He hadn't even been able to do anything, like finding the scattered members who had survived.

But maybe she could.

She was also justifiably fearful of fuinjutsu now. Seeing yourself, burned into an unrecognizable piece of charcoal-like meat tended to do that. That shit was _dangerous_. It was now on the 'do-not-touch' scale right next to space-time and soul techniques because of those memories.

_'You are the most important thing to me. And you now hove my very life. The life-force, longevity, and body of a full-blood Uzumaki. My final gift to you. Hopefully, you will consider it a suitable eighteenth birthday present.'_

How do you even respond to that? His gift was his life! There was literally _no way_ you could outdo that. If you weren't satisfied and happy with something like that, you had to have a heart of stone. Even if it was extremely bittersweet because of the circumstances.

_'I love you. Know that, and never doubt it. Your father, Shu Uzumaki, The Last Sealer of Uzushio'_

She was on the third page by now, and below his signature was a color photo.

A beautiful, tall, black-haired woman stood smiling to the left of a widely grinning man with shortish red hair. A small girl with the same shade was perched on his shoulders, gripping his head to keep from falling off, and was laughing in glee. The grinning man had an arm around the woman's shoulders, and a hand on the girl's knee, keeping her from falling off backwards. A stout, graying man stood to the left side of the woman, and was smiling faintly towards the camera, his eyes full of warmth.

She read the caption: Takumi, Akiha, Shu, and Tayuya. A date next to the caption indicated that she had been four when the picture was taken. She reached out a shaky hand and touched the faces in the picture. The tears she had managed to stop before were beginning to flow again, trailing warm paths down her cheeks.

Looking at the thing she had always wished for and wanted.

She had a name.

She had a clan.

She had a family.

And now she had a burning flame of hope that she might truly find a place where she belonged.

She needed to go to Iron, to find her grandfather.

Her blood ran cold.

Fucking hell. _How was she going to tell Fu?_

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

Well that was fun. The plot just got kicked into high gear, huh? Bet you didn't see that coming.

But now you know what Tayuya's dream from Chapter 2 was about. And why there's an 'Uzumaki' in the title... And a bunch of other stuff.

This chapter's unusually heavy and dense. Don't worry. We'll be back to our normal, carefree mood next chapter.

In case you didn't notice, I replaced the cover image with what Tayuya's seal _actually_ looks like.

read. review. follow!

See you next week!

ensou


	9. Freedom

**Disclaimer:**

Did characters of Naruto ever wear appropriate clothing for the elements while outdoors in the Land of Iron? If not, I don't own Naruto, nor any of the characters in it.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 9:<strong>  
><strong>Freedom<strong>

This wasn't the first time she had used the bracelets to locate Fu. But it was the first time that the leaf-patterned ring on Tayuya's wrist had led to the girl's home.

She had walked through the inky-black night, following the path the bracelet led her in, after she had resealed the book back into her hand and gotten dressed in some proper clothing, of course. The new seal (like her other one) appeared to be permanently visible now.

For the most part, the streets had been well-lit and fairly clean. But as she walked further and further, flickering streetlamps, decaying buildings, and weeds growing between cracks of cement had become increasingly common.

And now she stood in front of a doorway of an aged apartment building. The metal stairs to the second floor had almost collapsed, the bolts that held it to the side of the building showing their age. The brick and mortar that made up the building was completely gone in areas, crumbling from age and neglect.

She glanced down again to make sure this was the right room. Yep. The bracelet pointed straight ahead.

_Well, I can understand why she wouldn't bring anyone by._

Fu was more than likely _not_ going to appreciate being woken at two-thirty in the morning. But Tayuya needed to talk to somebody. And she really didn't have anybody else other than the jinchuriki to talk to about something like this. Not to mention she'd have to deal with the girl's reaction sooner or later, and she figured sooner might be the better option.

Tayuya knocked on the door. It was made of metal, and the white paint on it was peeling and flaking, completely gone in areas, exposing red-orange rust to the air. She looked at her knuckles and saw a tint of white dust, so she brushed them off on her pants.

There was a faint 'click' of a light being turned on, and then shuffled footsteps that became louder. A deadbolt 'clunk'ed out of place, and the door opened a little.

An orange eye peeked through the crack."Tayuya?" Fu opened the door the rest of the way, the hinges squeaking and protesting at the motion. "What're you doing here?"

Whoa. Fu with bedhead was... interesting. Little tufts of green hair stuck up around her like a ruffled feathers. She wore cute pajamas. Patterned with tiny beetles. _Of course._

"Hey. I, uh, I need to talk to you about something. And it can't wait." She responded nervously. Fu's eyes gained a little more brightness, and she shook her head, trying clear out the last of her stupor.

"Well... okay. Come in." Fu stood to the side and Tayuya entered.

It was tiny. One room. The walls were painted an off-color shade of yellow, and were bare of any decorations: no molding at the ceiling, no baseboard at the floor. There were two doors inside. The slatted one to the right looked like a closet while the solid one on the left side of the room opened to a small bathroom with only an old sink, a stand-up shower, and a toilet. The largest piece of furniture was the plain rectangular bed, and it sat against the back left corner, away from the door. A plastic lamp sat on a rickety wooden side table to the left of the bed, and illuminated the rest of the room.

"You can sit on the bed. I don't really have anywhere else." Fu said sleepily. She walked over and rolled onto it, drawing her knees up and yawning.

Tayuya crawled onto the bed and crossed her legs, facing Fu.

"Something weird happened. Like, _really_ weird. Completely unexpected. And I need to tell you because I think I need to talk to someone about it, and it kinda indirectly affects you. But... _please_ don't try and jump to conclusions." Tayuya pleaded. She really did not need the girl to suddenly go and jump to conclusions. Especially in the worse directions.

Fu froze for a moment and clenched up, reminding Tayuya of a snail.

_Goddammit._

"...What kind of something?" the green-haired girl asked warily.

Tayuya sighed and figured it would just be easier to show her rather than explain everything. She held up her right hand so that Fu could see the back and the spiraling seal, illuminated by the dim yellow light.

"Another seal showed up. This one. Except it told me what it was."

"What? What do you mean?" Fu's tone still held a sense of wariness, but now there was also vague curiosity, and all signs of her previous drowsiness were gone.

Tayuya brought her hand down, channeling a bit of chakra into the seal and thinking about the book. A 'poof' later, and it was sitting on the back of her right hand.

"...What is that?" In response, she simply picked it up and handed it over to the other girl.

"It'll be easier if you just read it." The letter was a bit personal. But she was close enough that Tayuya didn't care, and it was easier than repeating everything.

She watched Fu begin to read, tracking the changes in her expressions. The first one was surprise, and a tint of awe.

"Y-your _father_?" Fu stuttered out. She looked up at Tayuya, disbelief written on her face.

"Yeah, keep reading. It gets weirder." Tayuya waved towards the book, and the girl turned back to the page.

Tayuya just watched her, trying to understand what she was thinking. There was confusion, happiness, and jealousy as Fu moved through the rather wordy letter and then there was amazement.

"They saved _the entire library_? In _six hours_? How is that even possible?"

She shrugged in response. "I don't know. He said they sealed entire bookcases. That probably made it a lot easier." Fu seemed to accept that and went back to reading, becoming enraptured in the tale of Shu's escape. Tayuya had been the same way. It had been like she was there.

And then the other girl's face turned a shade of green that rivaled her hair. "H-How could they do that? Killing them all, in the water like that... How could anybody be that _cruel_?"

"Fear always brings out the worst in people." Tayuya said softly. Thoughts of Kiri started to move to the front of her mind, but she clamped down on them before they could surface. The fact that Fu was right next to her was immensely helpful, strengthening her ability to focus on happier thoughts.

The girl across from her just nodded silently in agreement, and eventually went back to the book after her face had transitioned back closer to its usual butterscotch color.

"What does he mean by 'transfer of memories' here?" she asked, pointing at a sentence. Oh. So it was a one-time thing.

"He somehow put some of his last memories into that little spiral that activated when I read that part. They... weren't very pleasant." Tayuya responded. _Yeah, that's one way to put it._ "I was in an accident with a badly activated seal, and ended up blowing a room in our house, and myself, to bits. I got really burned up. It was, uh, not pretty." She decided not to go into any further detail, remembering how Fu had reacted to the description of her squished legs.

"Anyways. He tried to get me under a stasis seal while I was still breathing, but I stopped before he finished. He spent weeks trying to figure out how to save me, and ended up making this seal to transfer his entire life force, healing me at the same time." She looked a little envious at that. Tayuya could understand why. Fu's parents were some of the worst she could have had, and in comparison _her_ father had willingly given his _life_, the ultimate sacrifice, to her.

"But something happened to my soul, and I lost all my long-term memories. That's why I can't remember anything before I was seven or eight. And why I only knew really basic stuff like my first name and age." Fu nodded, and jerkily turned back to the journal. Tayuya felt a bit guilty. She didn't mean to make her feel bad.

Fu finally made her way to the end of the letter, and looked silently at the photo, her eyes drinking in the scene. After a couple minutes she shut the book quietly. The room was silent.

"So what now? Are you going to try and find him? Your grandfather?" She asked shakily, her voice soft and lifeless. Tayuya could _see_ the girl's expectations of imminent pain and abandonment, pushing her to close off her emotions.

_This_ is why she had been worried about having the green-haired girl become so attached to her, so quickly. And vice versa. She had been (and was) worried that Fu would become so emotionally dependent on her that anything unexpected would completely tear her apart, validating her fears of abandonment. But it was like watching a train-wreck in motion, unable to do anything to stop their relationship from growing. And Tayuya really didn't want to, either.

"Y-Yeah. I want to look for him." Fu started to say something, her face twisted into an expression of hurt and betrayal. The redhead rushed to finish her sentence. "But I want you to come with me!"

Fu froze, shocked still. "W-What?"

Tayuya took a breath, before saying it more calmly. "I want you to come with me. To Iron."

She could see the gears whirring behind those bright orange eyes, and Fu looked just about ready to agree, before they abruptly went cold and hard again, and her face fell.

"I can't."

"What? Why not?"_This is her chance, why isn't she taking it!?_

"Taki would never let me go." the jinchuriki answered bitterly.

"FUCK TAKI!" Tayuya shouted. "What _good_ have they ever done for you?"

Fu looked away from her, towards the blank wall, avoiding Tayuya's eyes.

"Look. We can work something out. Iron is a neutral country. No shinobi. So if we can get it, Taki can't do anything about you, and you don't have to worry about being put in the bingo books, at least not any other country's, because they wouldn't want to advertise that they had lost their giant battery. " Tayuya said, explaining her reasoning.

Fu turned back to her.

She took that as a signal to continue. "Look, it'll be easy. You do missions out of the village, right?" she asked.

The green-haired girl nodded hesitantly, and Tayuya took that as a cue to continue.

"Alright. So, you request one of those. I leave beforehand. And then you catch up to me. We can be over the border before they realize anything's happened. Taki's done shit for you. I know the only reason you haven't left is because you're afraid of being hunted down and branded a traitor." Her voice became pleading. "But this is your chance. You won't be alone. I'll be with you. We can go. Get away. Go somewhere and just... disappear off the map."

This was the best plan she had come up with while sitting at home, worrying about how to convince the girl to join her after coming to the conclusion that there was no way in _hell_ she was willing to leave Fu behind to deal with this village's oppressive, abusive environment without her by the girl's side. She had become too emotionally invested. But she really couldn't care less.

Tayuya liked this. Having someone you could talk to no matter what. Who didn't judge you for the things you had done, but the person you were now. Who could understand you, and _liked_ you just for being you. Fu had given her a taste of what that was like. And it was addicting. She didn't think she could ever go back to being the distant, caustic girl she had been before. She'd changed too much, opened herself up too wide to ever become so closed off again. It was both alarming and thrilling. She wanted this. _Needed_ this. And she wasn't going to give it up without a fight.

"_I_ need to find my grandfather. And _you_ need to get somewhere that isn't Taki, somewhere you don't have to live like an outcast, somewhere safe. Iron is perfect for that."

Fu bit her lip in obvious anxiety, the consequence of trying to deal with and process too much at once. "I need - I need to time to think about it. And to talk to Sado. I need to see him." she said.

Tayuya relented at that and stopped pushing. But it felt like she had won the green-haired girl over.

* * *

><p>Fu went to see Sado first thing in the morning. She hadn't been able to go back to sleep. Thinking of all of the things she had just learned about her best friend.<p>

The shock of it all was mind-numbing. She was slightly thankful for that, as it kept her from falling to pieces _immediately_.

She had frozen in fear when she thought that Tayuya was going to leave her behind. She had nearly shutdown completely, trying to block out the pain of being abandoned and discarded _again_. This time by the girl she had slowly but surely fallen in love with.

And then Tayuya had suggested that Fu join her. She had nearly agreed right away out of reflex, just to stop the pain, to make it all disappear. And then her brain had restarted itself, and she realized there was no chance. Taki would never let her go.

But Tayuya had offered a plan that had given Fu hope. And it was just crazy enough that it might actually work. She hadn't wanted to give into that tiny spark of fancy. But she had. It was all she had left.

She knocked on Sado's door (it was blue), glancing about to make sure no-one was in the immediate vicinity to see her enter his apartment. He didn't really care all that much, but she didn't want to ruin his life or anything just by being in contact with him. It was around six-thirty in the morning, before he left for his shift, and she knew he'd be up by now. He lived in an apartment building that was much nicer than hers.

Sado opened the door. "Hm? Fu? What's up?" he asked, letting her into the apartment.

"I need to talk to you." she explained, walking to the living room and collapsing onto the squarish super-soft chair. She needed the comfort right now.

She turned to him as he sat himself down on the white couch adjacent to her with a cup of black coffee. The aroma was tantalizing, and Fu's stomach ached, reminding her she had completely forgotten about eating.

"Something's happened." Her voice betrayed her anxiety.

"Tayuya's leaving." he responded.

"Tayuya's lea-. What!? How did you know that?"

"You're here, at six-thirty in the morning, and you look like you're going crazy with worry. Something's happened with Tayuya. And since you're here instead of with her, it wasn't something life-threatening. Therefore, Tayuya's leaving. It was going to happen eventually." He sipped his coffee. "And nothing else would get you this worked up."

Alright. Maybe he did have something there. But he made it sound like such a natural conclusion. Was she really so simple that her thoughts were that transparent?

"Yes. You are." _When the hell did you become psychic?_ He took another sip of the bitter drink. "At least when it's about her. It comes with being in love."

Fu eyed him. Saying that kind of thing made him seem so _old_. It was weird. She knew he had had a life before they met, but it never really came up. But it was things like this that made it clear just how much life experience Sado had with certain topics in comparison to her.

"So. What are you going to do?" he asked.

"I don't know! That's why I'm here!" she asserted. He gave her a deadpan look.

"Well, you're not in tears, emotionally broken, or disconnected. So she must have asked you to go with her." Alright, now it was just getting creepy.

He laughed at her expression. "Give me a little credit. I've known you for over five years now." Fu pouted. "Where's she going?"

"Iron. To find her grandfather she just found out about." Fu responded. Sado looked slightly surprised, but then smiled.

"Iron, huh? That'd be perfect for you, right? Ninja-neutrality and all. But I hear it's pretty cold there." he said, looking at her thoughtfully.

"Yeah." More like freeze-your-nipples-off cold. She hated cold weather. But she knew she'd deal with it if she was with Tayuya. It just went to show just how much the redhead meant to her at this point. A _ridiculous_ amount.

"It seems to me like you have your answer right there." he stated, as if reading her thoughts.

She just sat there in shock. "What?"

"It's the obvious choice, too. The reason you aren't breaking down or depressed beyond belief is because you've already chosen to leave." Sado explained.

She tried to refute him, to tell him that wasn't true, but the words lodged themselves in her throat like a lump.

He put the cup of coffee down on the center table, the ceramic of the mug clinking on the glass, and sighed.

"Fu. Don't let your pride and fear stop you from doing what you need to do _for you_. You _need_ to go. I've watched you grow up, and Takigakure is slowly but surely suffocating you. It's going to be your death before you're twenty. You need to experience something else." He picked up his coffee again, drinking some and then holding it between both hands, looking down into it for a moment, and then looking back up and locking eyes with her.

"You're a bright and energetic girl, now that you've opened up and become more true to yourself. I wish you could see how much you've changed since you met Tayuya. Before it was like you were simply dragging on through life, and everyday was a chore to be completed. I almost never saw you smile. But now you're expressive, and cheerful, and whenever you think about her you practically glow with content, this huge grin on your face. And I'm so proud of you, because you've finally found a reason to _live_. Don't let go of that. I don't want to see you revert back into the person you used to be.

"You can't let your fears control you, and stop you from being the person you _could_ be. But. That means you'll have to step out of your comfort zone every so often." he said.

So he wanted her to go? "B-But, what about you?" She didn't want to leave him behind. He had been such a big part of her life.

"What about me? I'll be here. I'll be fine. I'm not going anywhere. And more recently you've needed to talk with me less and less, because you're happier and don't need my support anymore. That's okay. Part of growing up is learning how to leave friends behind as you move forward. Don't let this sort of thing pass you by because you're afraid of the repercussions. I know what it's like to make the wrong choice." His voice held sadness and regret, and his face briefly flickered with remembered pain.

Fu's eyes watered momentarily. "A-Alright." She resolved herself. "Alright. I'm going." she said. And she knew then that it had been decided the second Tayuya had said she was leaving. Her heart wouldn't allow her to do anything else.

But it felt bittersweet. Bitter because she would be leaving Sado behind. The person who had helped her so much growing up, and had given her her first taste of what it was like to be cared about _unconditionally_, something her parents had failed at. And he was her first friend. But it was sweet because it would mean the beginning of something she had only dreamed of: Freedom. Free from this horrible village. Free to be with Tayuya as long as the redhead wanted her around.

"I-I'll write you. Even if I can't tell you where we are." Fu promised.

Sado smiled again. "Alright."

She got up, and went around the short table. Sado stood, and she hugged him tightly, gripping the back of his shirt as tears slid down her cheeks. "I'm going to miss you." she whispered.

He ruffled her hair. "Nope. You won't even get the chance. You'll be having too much fun."

* * *

><p>As soon as Tayuya got to work, she explained to Yamada that a family emergency had come up, that she had to leave unexpectedly and would probably be living with them for the foreseeable future. He said he understood, wrote her a paycheck, and told her that if she ever came back she would have a job with him. She thanked him, and then immediately went to cash the check before heading home to pack.<p>

There was a bunch of stuff she had accumulated. But she had some extra storage scrolls from Shin and Yomi. She'd have to tell them what was happening. They'd be pretty interested in this development. Especially if she actually found her grandfather.

So she went about, packing her things, preparing to leave that night. Iron was a completely different climate, and she'd need different clothing to travel through the cold country. Chakra could only do so much below. So she needed things like a heavy thermal jacket. Snow-pants. Water-proof insulated boots. Gloves. And Tayuya could finally use this opportunity to get a new hat, even if it was a different kind than the one she had before. She smiled to herself at that thought.

She really hoped Fu would accept her offer. Taki was not good environment for her to be in. She needed to get away and see what a life without a guillotine hanging over your head was like. It had done wonders for Tayuya (her proverbial guillotine having gone by the name of 'Orochimaru'). And she had no idea what she would do if the green-haired girl _didn't_ agree to join her. She honestly didn't _want_ to think of that option.

She didn't want to imagine not being able to be with her.

* * *

><p>They met up for lunch, and Fu agreed to join Tayuya, which made the redhead uncharacteristically pleased. After that, they sat planning what they would do, and what they needed. Fu had gone home immediately after talking to Sado and packed as well. But she didn't have any winter clothing. Since it would be suspicious if the village jinchuuriki suddenly went and bought clothes for a climate she should never be in, Tayuya was going to get outerwear for her the same time she got her own.<p>

After lunch, she went and bought the clothes they needed, sealing them into one of her last free sealing scrolls. A sea-green jacket for her, and a blue one for Fu. Each had a hood. Both pairs of pants, boots, and gloves were black. And she had gotten an orange beanie. She was really happy about that. Even if it _did_ make her head look like an upside-down flame.

Once she had checked the flat three times to make sure she hadn't left anything behind, Tayuya went outside with Shin's old bag on her back and locked up the apartment, dropping the key in the mailbox like Yamada had requested.

She left the house around two, but it took an hour to walk all the way across the village to the east gate. Even outside the gate, she had to walk in order to maintain her image as a civilian, and so her progress was slow. Once darkness fell, she crawled up into a tree and prepared to go to sleep.

If everything went as it should, Fu would go get an away mission tomorrow. She'd leave the village, heading whatever direction she was supposed to go. As soon as the trailing ANBU left (which might take awhile), she'd circle around and head east, and they would meet up around noon.

All Tayuya could do was cross her fingers and hope things went smoothly.

* * *

><p>She was woken up at dawn by the same kind of goddamn birds that were around her house. She made her way down from the large tree and back onto the road, trudging along slowly, only pausing to get out an energy bar for breakfast. Not the best tasting. But high-calorie. Perfect for getting ready to run later.<p>

She lost track of time, just staring ahead off into the distance. Everything looked the same. The trees, the horizon, the road. The monotony was practically anesthetizing.

"Hey!" _Fuck!_

Tayuya spun around and looked up at the trees in a ready stance before relaxing with a sigh. It was only Fu.

"Hey yourself. Everything go alright?" The girl nodded from her spot up on a tree branch. She was wearing her typical white outfit with the carbon mesh body armor underneath. Tayuya still thought the armor was absolute overkill considering Fu's abilities, but she swore it was great for close quarters. The only difference was a weird red thing on her back.

"What the hell is that thing?" Tayuya motioned at the object behind the girl.

"Hm? Oh! This is how I carry stuff!" Fu grinned widely. She jumped down to the ground next to her, and swung it off her back, allowing Tayuya to see the thing properly. It was a hard red tube made of... something. Its appearance reminded Tayuya of giant red thermos. Except clearly not metal on the outside. Fu unscrewed the top and tilted the entire thing so Tayuya could take a look.

Inside was a massive scroll. Not as big as the one Shu had described, but it was at least as big as the snake summoning contract she'd seen Orochimaru pull out from time to time.

"See? It's a scroll with pre-drawn storage points." Fu explained, pulling it out bit, and turning it around some, showing Tayuya a column of three points.

"Huh, that's pretty cool."

Fu let the scroll slide back in and screwed the cap back on. "Yup! It's airtight and waterproof everything. It's not really the best for things you need to get out constantly, but it's great for long trips. And I still love it anyways. It was one of the first things I bought when I had enough money, and it sort of became like a good luck charm for me when I'm traveling, so I've gotten really attached to it."

Tayuya nodded in understanding. It was like her old flute had been for her. Well, before it got cut into little pieces. It hadn't been great, but she'd still become pretty fond of it. "If we run, it shouldn't take more than an hour to cross the border. Ready?"

Fu nodded, lifting the tube over her head and settling the straps across her chest. "Mhm."

"Alright then. We should try to get there as fast as we can." Tayuya looked at Fu. "I mean, as fast as _I_ can go." The green-haired girl had demonstrated just how fast she could go without augmenting her muscles one day, and there was no chance of Tayuya keeping up with that for long periods of time like she had said she could.

Leaping up into the foliage on the side of the road, they headed east. The pair was silent for the most part, but it was a comfortable and calm silence.

Tayuya was glad that Fu was back to her usual chipper self instead of the hollowness she had displayed yesterday morning or the remnants that had still been around at lunchtime. Whatever Sado had said to her seemed to have really helped ease Fu's mind.

The trees steadily began to grow further and further apart, having switched from completely deciduous to mostly evergreen. The air kept getting colder and colder as they rose in altitude. Fifteen minutes later, they stopped and layered up. The warmth was pretty uncomfortable for the next quarter hour, even without the gloves on or the jackets zipped up. But after that, they were glad they had they extra clothing.

The trees finally got to the point where they were too far apart to jump between, so they descended onto the road and kept running. After ten minutes, the ground was covered in an two inches of snow, and they had to slow down. At the same time, they put on their gloves and closed their jackets. It wasn't long after that that a small wooden building, a border post, popped up by the side of the road. And it was manned by a pair of samurai. _'Surprise!'_

They were dressed in their usual white armor-slash-uniforms, with the masks and swords and everything. Proper Iron Country samurai. Tayuya resisted the temptation to stare.

The girls drew up to the outpost. "Halt!" _Yeah, no shit._ "Please present your identification." the one on the left said.

Fu fished out her 'civilian' ID from Taki, and Tayuya pulled out hers from the Land of Rice and her time with the snake. It was the same one she had used when she had entered Taki. Civilian IDs were a common thing for shinobi, in case they needed to get into places that were and not be known as ninja. Like now.

It was technically illegal for crossing borders or anything international, because it could be considered an act of war in certain cases, but they were also technically ex-ninja. And Tayuya didn't care how ethical or not it was anyways. They just needed to get in.

The guard who took the two laminated cards looked them over and noted their names in a ledger.

"Alright. You're good." He handed back their cards.

"You... wouldn't happen to know what direction Haboro is in, would you?" Tayuya asked them. They hadn't had any maps of Iron at the store where she'd gotten the winter gear. Maybe it was a security thing or something.

The guard that hadn't handled the IDs turned to Tayuya and pointed down the road. "You need to continue on this path, take the a right at the forks, another right, and then a far left. The signs should show you the way after that. But it's probably going to take longer than a day to get there, so be aware of the weather. There's a tendency to get sudden snowfalls up in the mountains." he warned.

"Thanks." she said, nodding to him. The two girls walked away from the guard post, entering Iron.

Shit. She hadn't planned for any longer than a day. She'd known that the snow would slow them down, but had still thought that they would easily be able to make it to the town and find an inn in less than five hours. Especially with Iron being the size it was and her father saying it was in the south. She hadn't ever needed to deal with winter climates like this before.

Tayuya turned to Fu nervously. "I, uh, thought this would be take less than a day, so I didn't buy thermal sleeping bags."

Fu groaned. "Great."

* * *

><p>The pair followed the samurai's directions, and were conscious of the time in relation to their location. The further they went, the higher in the mountains the path climbed, eventually getting to a point where there were only conifers, the path weaving through the trees lazily, having been made to maximize use of the flatter areas available.<p>

They'd just passed the third fork when snow started to fall, around six in the evening.

It started light at first, but steadily got heavier. Fu voiced concerns about continuing, but they decided to keep going and just keep an eye out for anything they could use as shelter. When the snow got to be half a foot deep, and they were starting to have trouble seeing straight, they gave up on moving forward at all and started looking for a place to spend the night.

They found a cave thirty minutes later, thankfully empty of animals, underneath a rocky outcropping a ways off the path. Not that they could really see the path anymore. But it was just in time, as the falling white began to blot out even the clouds, and their vision became zero.

And so they were trapped. It wasn't a large cave. And it was pretty narrow, about four feet wide. Which meant sleeping would be uncomfortable. But it was all they had to work with. Thankfully, it seemed the wind was coming from behind them, and therefore wasn't blowing snow into the cave. Which would have been terrible.

They ended up lying right next to each other on their backs, still in their clothes, trying to retain as much heat as they could.

There was no way to tell the passing of time, except for when the snow went from bright white, to dark white, indicating the sun had set. They had both munched on a shinobi ration bar each, and then settled in for the night, prepared to stay in the cave until the blizzard passed.

Tayuya lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, shivering. This sucked. Absolutely sucked. She was cold, and tired. Fu had fallen asleep, but Tayuya was finding it extremely difficult.

She was having a really hard time not being annoyed about the situation and her own role in creating it by not being prepared.

Fu shifted in her sleep, rolling over and dropping an arm over Tayuya's chest. The redhead stiffened at the contact and felt herself heart up. She was about to move the offending appendage until the girl actually grabbed her midsection and placed her head on Tayuya's shoulder. She could feel the heat of the Fu's breath on her neck.

The green-haired girl mumbled something unintelligible, and all Tayuya managed to pick out was her name. Why was she in Fu's dreams? Well, they had been spending a lot of time together. So it wasn't _too_ odd. Right? She felt a comfortable warmth spreading through her, and was unable to stop herself from smiling at the feeling. Having Fu hug her like this felt really nice.

Tayuya carefully moved her left arm out from under the other girl and around so that it was behind Fu's back, the redhead's hand curling around and laying on the side of the girl's torso. She closed her eyes contentedly, and a wave of sudden drowsiness swept over her.

Maybe being stuck here wasn't so bad after all.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

So yeah, unlike Fu, Tayuya doesn't have someone to coach her in how to talk to people about things, and thus, she takes the blunt route by default.

Sado is a lot of fun. Both as a character and to write. Originally he was supposed to be more comedic and provide relief from all of the serious stuff, but it really didn't suit him, or what Fu needed. So he evolved into this pseudo-brother/guardian role.

THE RED TUBE! Oh man. Honestly one of my favorite never-explained things in Naruto ever. I've seen it used for carrying insects, and there was one story I read where it was empty for almost the entire thing as a joke. But this is what I decided to make it into.

We're _finally_ out of Taki. It only took forever.

I'm really glad there was some small fluff there at the end. I really like ending chapters on a happy note like this... unlike 80% of the time. Damn my dramatic tendencies.

Read! Review! Follow! Tell your friends!

ensou

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